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Shelf....XI. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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STUDIES 



IN THE 



OUT-LYING FIELDS 



OP 



PSYCHIC SCIENCE 



By HUDSON TUTTLE 

AUTHOR OF ARCANA OP NATURE ORIGIN AND DEVELOP 
MENT OF MAN ETC 




New York 
M L HOLBROOK & CO 






• 



COPYRIGHT BY 
HUDSON TUTTLE, 

1889. 



TO 

ALFEED E. GILES, 

OF 

HYDE PARK, MASS., 

AN ERUDITE SCHOLAR, A FEARLESS INVESTIGATOR, AN 
UNSHRINKING ADVOCATE OF HIS CONVICTIONS, HON- 
EST AND TRUE TO HIMSELF AND OTHERS ; 

IN RECOGNITION OF A MUTUAL FRIENDSHIP OF MANY 
TEARS THIS VOLUME IS FRATERNALLY DEDICATED. 



ANALYSIS. 



There is a Psychic Ether, related to thought, as the lumi- 
nifereous ether is to light. 

This may be regarded as the thought atmosphere of the 
universe. A thinking being in this atmosphere is a pulsating 
center of thought-waves, as a luminous body is of light. 

There is a state of mind and body known as sensitive, or 
impressible, in which it receives impressions from other 
minds. This state may be normal, or induced by fatigue, 
disease, drugs, or arise in sleep. The facts of clairvoyance, 
trance, somnambulism and psychometry prove the existence 
of this ether, and are correlated to it. 

Thought transference is also in evidence, as well as that 
vast series of facts which give intimation of an intelligence 
surviving the death of the physical body. 

This sensitiveness may be exceedingly acute, and the indi- 
vidual unconscious of it, and then it is known as genius, which 
is acute susceptibility to the waves of the psychic atmos- 
phere. 

Sensitiveness explains the true philosophy of prayer. 

All the so-called occult phenomena of mesmerism, trance, 
clairvoyance, mind reading, dreams, visions, thought trans- 
ference, etc., are correlated to and explained by means of this 
psychic ether. 

All these phenomena lead up to the consideration of im- 
mortality, which is a natural state, the birthright of every 
human being. 



6 ANALYSIS. 

The body and spirit are originated and sustained together, 
and death is their final separation. 

The problem of an immortal future, beginning in time, is 
solved by the resolution of forces at first acting in straight 
lines, through spirals reaching circles which, returning with- 
in themselves, become individualized and self-sustaining. 

Spiritual beings must originate and be sustained by laws 
as fixed and unchanging as those which govern the physical 
world. 

Sensitiveness gives great pleasures and may give pain ; the 
author's experience as a sensitive, related, shows this. 

And, finally, a communication from a spirit whose life had 
been noble and unselfish, given while the recepient was in a 
sensitive and receptive state, detailing an account of the 
phenomena called death, but which is really birth into the 
spirit realm the meeting of friends, and the knowledge of a 
quarter of a century of its joys, together with ''the poet's 
story, it being an account given by one whose earth-life had 
been selfish, and whose selfish thoughts had formed them- 
selves into phantom companions, following him into the 
realm of the future world, and making his life there one of 
despair, and how he escaped these legitimate children of his 
brain by heroic acts of unselfishness, complete the story. 
These last are no fictions of the imagination, written to 
amuse the reader ; but the author is firmly convinced, yes, 
knows they are the words of actual living beings who have 
once lived on earth like ourselves. 

H. T. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Dedication 3 

Analysis 5 

CHAPTER I. 
Matter, Life, Spirit 9 

CHAPTER II. 
What the Senses Teach of the World and the Doctrine of Evolution 30 

CHAPTER III. 
Scientific Methods of the Study of Man, and its Results 31 

CHAPTER IV. 

What is the Sensitive State 37 

CHAPTER V. 

Sensitive State: Its Division into Mesmeric, Somnambulic and Clair- 
voyant 44 

CHAPTER VI. 
Sensitiveness Proved by Psy chometry 64 

CHAPTER VII. 

Sensitiveness During- Sleep 75 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Dreams • • • • • £6 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 
Sensitiveness Induced by Disease 93 

CHAPTER X. 
Thought Transference 99 

CHAPTER XL 
Intimations of an Intelligent Force 117 

CHAPTER XII. 
Effects of Physieal Influences on the Sensitive 147 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Unconscious Sensitiveness 151 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Prayer in tbe Light of Sensitiveness and Thought Waves 165 

CHAPTER XV. 
Christian Science, Mind Cure, Faith Cure— their Physical Relations 178 

CHAPTER XVI. 
What the Immortal State Must Be 188 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Personal Experience — Intelligence from tbe Sphere of Light 217 



Matter, Life, Spirit. 



Necessity of Knowledge, not Faith. — Guizot forci- 
bly expresses the value of a knowledge of future 
life when he says: "Belief in the supernatural 
(spiritual) is the special difficulty of our time ; de- 
nial of it is the form of all assaults on Christianity, 
and acceptance of it lies at the root, not only of 
Christianity, but of all positive religion whatever," 

He stands not alone in this conclusion. The dif- 
ficulty, to a great majority of men of science and 
leaders of thought, appears insurmountable, and 
they no longer feel a necessity for defending their 
want of belief, but smile at the credulity of those 
who believe anything beyond what their senses 
reveal. 

Not only the infidel world perceives this difficulty ; 
it is well understood by the leaders of Christianity, 
for they have been taught its strength by the irre- 
pressible conflict which has culminated in the want 
of belief at the present time. With this result be- 
fore them, it is idle for the church leaders to assert 
that revelation in the Bible is sufficient to remove 
this difficulty, which has grown in the very sanctu- 
ary, in the shadow of biblical teachings. While the 
value of the Bible, as interpreted by theologians, 
depends on the belief in immortality, it has not 
proved the existence of man beyond the grave in 
such an absolute manner as to remove doubt ; and 
yet, of all evidence it is designed to give, that on 



10 MATTER, LIFE, SPIRIT. 

this point should be the most complete and irre- 
futable. 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves nothing, 
even admitted in its most absolute form. If Christ 
was the Son of God and God himself, he was unlike 
ordinary mortals, and what is true of him is not 
necessarily so of them. 

His physical resurrection does not prove theirs. 
Admitting similarity, his bodily resurrection after 
three days, while his body remained unchanged, 
does not prove theirs after they have become dust, 
and scattered through countless forms of life for a 
thousand ages. If, with some sects, the resurrection 
of the body be discarded, then the resurrection of 
Christ has no significance, for it is expressly held 
that his body was revivified and taken from the 
tomb. 

Skepticism has increased, because the supporters 
of religion have not attempted to keep pace with the 
march of events, but, on the contrary, asserted that 
they had all knowledge possible to gain on this sub- 
ject, and that anything outside of their interpreta- 
tion was false. 

Instead of founding religion on the constitution of 
man, and making immortality his birthright, they 
have regarded these as foreign to him, and only 
gained by the acceptance of certain doctrines. They 
removed immortality from the domain of accurate 
knowledge; and those who pursued science turned 
with disgust from a subject which ignored present 
research for past belief. 

Hence, there has been, unfortunately, the great 
army of investigators and thinkers, in the realm of 
matter, studying its phenomena and laws, never 
approaching the threshold of the spiritual ; and, 
on the other hand, the more important knowledge 



THE ATOM. 11 

of spirit, of man's future, which retrospects his pre- 
sent life and all past ages, and reaches into the in- 
finite ages to come, was the especial care of those 
who scorned nature and abhorred reason. Hence 
the antagonism, which can only be removed by the 
priest laying aside his books as infallible authority, 
discarding beliefs, dogmas, and metaphysical word 
legerdemain, and studying the inner world in the 
same manner that the outer has been so advantage- 
ously explored. When this has been done, it may be 
found that physical investigators have not the whole 
truth, even when they have been the most exact. 

It may be found that, having omitted the spiritual 
side in all their investigations, their conclusions are 
erroneous to the extent of that factor, which may be 
one of the most important. It may be found that in 
order to have a complete and perfect knowledge of 
the external world, the internal or spiritual must be 
understood. 

Here we face the time-old questions : What is 
matter ? What is spirit ? The philosophy of nature 
here rests. There is no middle ground. The ma- 
terialist starts from the atom, which, he says, has in 
itself all the possibilities of the universe and outside 
of which there is nothing. 

The Atom. — But who knows of the atom, into 
which matter, at last analysis, is resolved ? No one. 
Aside from the active forces which apparently flow 
from it, we know nothing, and speculation takes the 
place of knowledge. That speculation, unfettered 
by the requirements of accurate science, grew rankly 
in the minds of the sages of antiquity, and bore the 
strangest fruits. From that time to the present, 
speculative thought has not ceased in activity, nor 
arrived at any certain conclusion. 



12 MATTER, LIFE, SPIRIT. 

The atomic theory is one of the most splendid 
generalizations in the whole circle of sciences. As 
a working hypothesis its aid is invaluable, and the 
solution it affords of the most intricate combination 
of the elements, truly marvelous. Yet it is a conjec- 
ture ; the existence of the atom a guess. No one 
ever saw, tasted, or felt the atom. It is absolutely 
beyond the senses, as it is beyond any instrumental 
aid thereto. The entire structure of physical sci- 
ence, as expounded to-day, rests on conjecture, the 
only evidence in support of which is that it explains 
the phenomena. There is no assurance that other 
conjectures might not explain them quite as well. 

It would be a waste of time to explore this field, 
wherein the baseless dreams of philosophers and 
scientists have grown like Jonah's gourd, over- 
shadowing the barren sands. 

The manner in which the nature of the distinct 
and indestructable atom was arrived at, shows the 
puerility of the theory. If we take a fragment of 
matter, we can break it into distinct pieces ; these 
are again divided, and so on, until we reach a point 
where further division is impossible 

One of these indivisible particles, says the Materi- 
alist, is an atom ; a conclusion derived from the 
gross conception of material division, and the limita- 
tion of the mind. 

Endow this atom with force, or call it a center for 
the propagation of force, and the materialistic system 
is complete ; yet these conclusions are but dreams. 
With equal arrogance, the Materialists lead to the 
higher ground of vitality, of mind and of morals, for- 
getting that the fundamental proposition on which 
this system rests is a guess, a surmise, and nothing 
more 

But investigation by other means than the primi- 



NEW PROPERTIES.— WHAT IS MATTER ? 13 

tive experience of mechanical division, shows that 
the atom has no existence as a fixed entity. Pro- 
fessor Crookes has demonstrated that matter has 
properties unknown to the present race of philo- 
sophers. 

By way of illustration : If a certain vessel be closed, 
and the air exhausted, until only one hundred atoms 
remain, that hundred leave no space, but occupy the 
entire vessel. If the vacuum be made more perfect, 
and only ten atoms remain, the ten still occupy the 
whole space ; and if the process could be carried so 
far that only one remained, it would still fill the 
space. The atomist might divide it indefinitely, and 
yet each division fill the space. In short, w-ere there 
but one atom in the universe, that atom would fill all 
space, 

New Properties. — When matter is thus rarified, or 
in other words, when the pressure is removed, new 
properties appear, and the tangible fades into the 
intangible. The qualities of pure force begin to be 
manifested. The intimation is made that were it 
possible to make the vacuum more perfect, there 
would arise out of this invisible gas, spontaneous 
manifestation of energy ; or matter would be re- 
solved into force. 

What is Matter % — Having seen that the conception 
of the atom is immature, and incapable of demon- 
stration, we find matter, of which the atom is sup- 
posed to be the foundation, equally incapable of de- 
finition. With matter we never come in sensuous 
contact ; we only know its forces, as expressed in 
phenomena. 

The succession of seasons, the recurrence of day 
and night, the teeming earth, the starry heavens — 



14 MATTER, LIFE, SPIRIT. 

these are manifestations of matter. Matter here is 
revealed to us as an appearance. Matter is appear- 
ance ; phenomena are concrete expressions of force. 
It may be asked : Do these phenomena create them- 
selves ? Do bodies become organic by the conflu- 
ence of atoms ? Rather are they not molded by 
the force which through them gains expression ? 
What is this force ? Is it independent ? On ulti- 
mate analyses, force resolves itself into motion, 
which is discernable to the senses only as expressed 
in phenomena. If we were obliged to explain the 
phenomena of matter only, some theory might be 
plausibly maintained ; fronting one world we might 
understand it, but we are fronting two worlds. 
There is constantly the caused and the cause. We 
never are satisfied that the caused caused itself. 
We may receive the beautiful exposition of the 
doctrine of evolution, and yet we have only the 
*road over which life has been irresistibly forced. 
Why ? Wherefore ? By what power ? Instinct- 
ively we turn to the realm of spiritual causes. 

Material science, with all its boasted accuracy 
and infallibility, breaks down, and utterly fails, 
when called to explain mental and spiritual phen- 
omena. It boasts of infallibility, when its funda- 
mental theories are conjectures that the advance 
of thought may to-morrow show to be vagaries of 
fancy. We must look to the eternal activities of 
spirit for the final solution of the grossest manifest, 
ation of matter. 

Nature a Witches' Pot. — The present conception 
of nature, by material science, is a witches' pot, into 
which, by some unknown process, matter and force 
were placed. The pot seethes, and out of the seeth- 
ing conflict foams up to the surface in kaleido- 



NATURE A WITCH'S POT. 15 

scopic changes, organic beings. The savans stand 
around its rim like Shakespeare's witches and chant 
a technical gibberish about laws ; the pre-existence 
and correlation of force ; the indestructibility of 
energy ; the eternity of matter ; the potentialities of 
the atom ; the struggle for existence ; the survival 
of the fittest, and in admiration praise each other's 
profundity of sight, while the sharpest eyed see 
nothing beneath the foaming scum. They pride 
themselves on explanations, of causes, while really 
they play with words. 

At the threshold of this discussion of the problem 
of mind and spirit we have that of life. The living 
being is the most wonderful achievement of force in 
its multitudinous forms. Life is the gateway to the 
realm of spirit, and beyond that gateway lie the 
questions we seek to solve. 

The living being, by the fact of its being such, has 
new and hitherto undetermined relations. It has 
escaped from the hold of the forces in part from the 
common lot of matter, and a new horizon uplifts be- 
fore it. New and mysterious forces intrude, the sum 
of which we call vital energy. Well we know that 
here the material scientist will smile or sneer, for 
he has already settled the question in his own mind 
and that of his confreres, that there is nothing be- 
yond the properties of matter. The animal body is 
composed of definite quantities of carbon, hydrogen, ' 
lime, iron, etc., and the conflict of atoms, the com- 
bustion of carbon by the oxygen of the air, the burn- 
ing of phosphorus in the nerves, is the activity 
evolved which is called life. In the higher ani- 
mals, especially in man, this life force derived from 
burning elements is changed to thought, and the 
quantity of thought depends on the activity of the 
process. 



16 MATTER, LIFE, SPIRIT. 

No one, however, has ever proved that such trans- 
formation occurs, or even attempted the task. The 
most thoughtful and profound acknowledge that at 
the threshold of life all physical theories utterly fail, 
and that the problem does not admit of solution. 
The more persistent declare life to be a resultant of 
protoplasm ; a fragment of protoplasm is the lowest 
form of a living being. It is a homogeneous mass, 
scarcely a cell or aggregation of cells. These cells 
do not feel or know; they are sensitive ; that is all. 
A human being is said by these material scientists 
to be the sum of an infinite number of moners, as a 
coral branch is the sum of a great number of polyps 
These moners form, under different circumstances, 
bone, muscle, and nerve. They propagate and die. 
Their multiplication and destruction is the source 
and accompaniment of vital changes, and mental 
states. When the necessity for the destruction of 
a great number of these moners arises, the end, 
the destruction of all, or death of the combined 
organism is the result. 

According to this view, by the simple addition of 
moners, we obtain something none of them singly 
possessed. The single moner has only sensitive- 
ness, their infinite aggregate, in the human being, 
has feeling, intelligence, will, and God-like aspira- 
tions. The time old axiom never before disputed is 
set aside, and the sum is declared to be not only 
greater than its parts — it is infinitely greater, and 
acquires qualities which the parte do not possess. 

It may be urged that in the acquisition of new 
qualities the same is true of the chemical union of 
elements, which yield products entirely different in 
quality from the combining bodies. These, how- 
ever, unite in fixed proportions in a manner far from 
understood, while, with the hypothetical moners, 



LIFE AND MIND. 17 

they are aggregated mechanically, as polyps in a 
cluster, and this union of individuals changes not 
their functions, but simply increases the mass. 

Whether we accept this moner hypothesis, or the 
more generally received theory that life is the pro- 
duct of organization, arising from the chemical ac- 
tions in the body, it is impossible to say wherein the 
dead animal differs from the living. Analysis can 
not reveal this secret, for the living animal can not 
be subjected to that test. The life principle escapes 
before the alembic or retort is brought into requi- 
sition. The song of the bird can not be found by 
chemical analysis. We know that the living being 
is held together, and dominated over by the strong- 
est forces, and the moment these relax their hold, 
decomposition commences. What are these forces ? 
Whence do they come ? Whither do they go ? 

Life and Mind. — Taking vital force in its highest 
expression, in man, it is self-conscious and has 
independent will. It arises above the atoms of 
its physical being, above the influences which 
environ it, and says, I will, and executes that will. 
I know well that if we here leave physical science 
for metaphysics, there are philosophers who would 
not only reason away this force, but the existence of 
the body itself. They are true intellectual acrobats; 
amusing jugglers, who throw words instead of, 
painted balls, and confuse by their wonderful dex-, 
terity. Yet, after all has been said, we knoiv we 
exist and have physical bodies. Had we not such 
bodies the thought of them would never have been 
fashioned in our minds. As we know the sun will 
rise, or the night follow, we know we have bodily 
forms, and are thereby brought in contact with the 
physical world. It is a fact, and as such can not be 



18 MATTER, LIFE, SPIRIT. 

reasoned away. In the same manner we are con- 
scious of a mental or spiritual life which arches the 
physical world as the dome of the sky. 

Is the Gulf between Spirit and Matter Bridged?— 

Here we come to that vague and uncertain realm 
where spirit touches matter. We leave the coast line 
of the tangible and seen for the intangible and un- 
seen. There is no bridge over the gulf, which is said 
to be impassable. Material and spiritual phenomena 
are united by no common bond, and each stands by 
itself. The great thought stream has set toward the 
materialistic interpretation of all spiritual phen- 
omena, or ruled them out of the pale of the believable. 
If these phenomena are real, if man — the ego — is 
superior to the oxygen and carbon of his body; if the 
manifestations of mind are superior to the conbus- 
tion of tissue in the lungs, then all these manifesta- 
tions should be amenable to certain laws and con- 
ditions, which ascertained, will harmonize them into 
a perfect system. 

The brain is the point of contact between spirit 
and matter, and as far as the manifestations of that 
spirit are related to the material world while con- 
nected with the physical body, it must be through 
and by means of the brain. The intimate character 
of this relation gives strong color to the reasoning 
based on the material view that the brain produces 
thought, as the liver produces bile. But such rea- 
soning is from appearance rather than the reality. 
There is, as Tyndall eloquently expresses, a chasm 
between matter and mind that can not be passed. 

" The passage from the physics of the brain to the 
corresponding facts of consciousness is unthink- 
able .... Were our minds and senses so ex- 
panded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable 



SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE.— SPIRITUAL ETHER. 19 

us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; 
were we capable of following all their motions, all 
their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such 
there be ; and were we intimately acquainted with 
the corresponding states of thought and feeling, — 
we should be as far as ever from the solution of the 
problem, 'How are these physical processes con- 
nected with the facts of consciousness ?' The chasm 
between the two classes of phenomena would still 
be intellectually impossible." 

Spiritual Substance. — As the experiments alluded 
to show that matter may, under certain conditions, 
take on new properties, ceasing to be matter, in the 
usual acceptance of that word, the horizon of mat- 
ter which has been thought to rest over attenu- 
ated hydrogen, may extend to infinite reaches be- 
yond, including stuffs or substances which have 
never been revealed to the senses. As the eye is 
capable of detecting only a narrow belt of rays, and 
the ear a scarcely broader belt of sounds, beyond 
which, on either side, are unknown realms of light 
and sounds, so we are able to detect only a narrow 
range of elements ; and there may be a realm on one 
side too gross for recognizance by the senses, and on 
the other, one too attenuated. Beings fashioned 
of this attenuated substance might walk by our side 
unseen, nor cast a shadow in the noon-day sun. 

Spirit Ether. — Aside from this spiritual substance, 
beyond the pale of the most attenuated matter, is 
the spirit ether. The students of light have found 
it possible to explain its phenomena only by the 
hypothesis of an ether, a universal fluid of extreme 
tenuity, the vibrations of which are interpreted by 
the eye as light. This ether was at first a dream of 



20 WHAT THE SENSES TEACH. 

the imagination ; but, by answering all questions 
and receiving the verification of mathemetics, it has 
become a demonstrated reality. It is probably the 
common medium for the transference of electricity, 
heat, and magnetism as well. It is an illustration of 
one of the many instances where the Imagination 
has overreached the Reason in the race of dis- 
covery. 

In the same manner we may predicate another 
ether, the medium through which all spiritual phen- 
omena are produced. We may prove the existence 
of this ether, by the certainty and harmony of the 
answers it gives, as the existence of the luminifer- 
ous ether has been demonstrated. As the great life- 
giver, we may distinguish it as phycho-ether. It 
can not be said to be material, for it belongs to the 
region beyond that recognized as material by our 
senses. It is the sublimation of matter, vastly more 
attenuated than light-ether, and thought is propa- 
gated in it from thinking centers, as light is in the 
luminif erous ether from luminous bodies. The qual- 
ities of this ether are the possibilities of life and 
spirit and to it for explanation we refer all psychic 
phenomena. 



What the Senses Teach 

OF THE 

World and the Doctrine of Evolution. 



Is there more than one World— stuff? — Thus far, 
with a few exceptions which may be called hetero- 
dox, physicists have in their speculations used the 
term matter as though in ultimate conception there 



IS THERE MORE THAN ONE WORLD % 21 

is but one kind of matter and the atoms of that mat- 
ter are absolutely alike. In other words there is but 
one stuff of which the cosmos is formed. The senses 
on which this theory is based do not endorse, but, by 
their limitation, prove the opposite. We have no 
means of knowing of sound aside from the ear, 
which is wonderfully fashioned to receive vibrations 
and transmit them to the brain ; yet its imperfec- 
tion, caused by the limitations of nerve tissue, re- 
veals the fact that it is cognizant of only a narrow 
field, either side of which is a wide tract, which to it 
is profound silence. If a sound wave impinges on 
the ear with less vibrations than 16£ times in a sec- 
ond it is inaudible ; and if the number of vibrations 
is increased above 38,000 per second, they again lose 
the power of impressing the ear. There may be in- 
sects capable of hearing these high sounds, which to 
man are silence itself ; and the long waves that beat 
less than 16£ times in a second may be sweet music 
to some of the lower tribes of animated life. 

Perfect as the eye may be as an optical instru- 
ment, its range is far less than that of the ear. Only 
those rays of light having waves 1-39, 000th of an 
inch in length are visible on one side, and the last- 
visible radiations on the other end of the spectrum 
have wave lengths of 1-575, 000th of an inch. This 
is a narrow limit, and on either side there must be 
rays, which eyes or nerves differently constructed 
would receive and interpret, yielding, perhaps, col- 
ors unknown to our consciousness. There is a har- 
mony in color waves, like music in sound waves, 
for as a note blends in one, in all octaves above 
or below, so light waves, twice or thrice the length 
of given waves yield the same color impression. 

We may regard from the same point of view the 
sense of taste, the nerves of which have a still nar- 



22 WHAT THE SENSES TEACH. 

rower range, and are apparently differently affected in 
animals than they are in man — substances disagree- 
able to him being relished by them, and of course 
affecting the taste differently. 

We are not sure that there are not senses which 
appreciate conditions of matter, of which we have 
no conception. There are insects which apparently 
have organs bestowing senses unlike our own. Their 
antennse have no corresponding organs in the higher 
animals, and the conception of the world which these 
give has no analogy in our minds. 

As the senses are thus cognizant of narrow belts 
of sound and light, leaving unknown stretches on 
either side, so what is called matter may be the 
narrow range recognized by our finite powers as a 
whole, on either side of which may lie stuffs of 
widely different qualities and possibilities. 

A Dead Yiew of Dead Worlds.— Pausing to con- 
sider the received theory of force, as an explanation 
of the causes of the world — creation, we shall find 
that it fails to meet the high, promises it vauntingly 
makes. 

According to the received theory of force, every 
manifestation of power and energy on the earth is 
originally derived from the sun. The growth of 
plants and animals, and all the activities displayed 
by the latter, are derived from their food, which 
was produced by the light and heat of the sun. 

In illustration of the sun's incalculable power, 
take, for instance, the rain fall of one-tenth of an 
inch extending over the United States. Such a rain- 
fall has been estimated at ten thousand millions of 
tons, which the heat of the sun had raised at least to 
the height of one mile. It would take all the pump- 
ing engines in the United States a century to lift this 



A DEAD WORLD. 23 

amount of water back again to the clouds. If the 
force is so great as displayed in the rain-fall of one- 
tenth of an inch, how incomprehensible the power 
which lifts the entire amount of water evaporated, 
amounting to, at least, forty inches ! 

Yet the force of the sun, manifested on the earth, 
is an inconceivably small part of that radiated, for 
the earth only receives in the proportion that its 
surface bears to the sphere of its orbit, and how in- 
comparable is its diameter of 8,000 miles to that of 
a sphere 184,000,000 across. The combined surface 
of all the planets would receive a scarcely appreci- 
able ratio of the entire amount which, unimpeded, 
flies away into the abyss of space. 

The energy radiated at the surface of the sun is 
estimated at 7,000 horse power to the square foot, 
and if the sun was a mass of coal, it would have to 
be consumed in 5,000 years in order to supply it, 
and in 5,000 years would have to cool down to 9,000 
degrees, C. If the nebular hypothesis be received, 
the contraction would supply the loss for 7,000 years 
before the temperature would fall 1 degree, C. 

Incomprehensible as this force is, it is constantly 
diminishing, and although the projection of meteors 
and hypothetical *cosmical bodies may prolong its 
action, the time must come when all its energy will 
be dissipated into space ; all bodies will have the 
same temperature, and as there is no other source 
of energy, physical and vital phenomena will cease, 
and the universe, bereft of living beings, will itself 
be dead. 

A Dead World. — According to the most advanced 
views at present entertained, this is the end of the 
career of the universe. 

Balfour Stewart endorses this conclusion by say- 



24 WHAT THE SENSES TEACH. 

ing: "We are induced to generalize still further, 
and regard not only our own system, but the whole 
material universe, when viewed with respect to 
serviceable energy, as essentially evanescent, and 
as embracing a succession of physical events which 
can not go on forever as they are." 

In stronger language Mr. Pickering says: "The 
final result, therefore, would be that all bodies 
would assume the same temperature, there would 
be no further source of energy; physical phenom- 
ena would cease, and the physical universe would 
be dead. Such, at least, is the present view of this 
stupendous question." 

In explanation of the origin of this energy, and 
the reason for its loss, Mr. Stewart further says: 
"It is supposed that these particles originally ex- 
isted at a great distance from each other, and that, 
being endowed with force of gravitation,, they have 
gradually come together ; while in this process heat 
has been generated, just as if a stone were dropped 
from the top of a cliff toward the earth.'* 

Thus the universe would become an equally heated 
mass, utterly worthless as far as the work of pro- 
duction is concerned, since such production depends 
on difference of temperature. 

In other words, the universe becomes dead mat- 
ter, wholly incapable of supporting life, and so far 
as present science gives us any information, must 
remain forever at rest. 

The fact that such a conclusion has been reached 
should cause us to pause in doubt of the correctness 
of the data leading thereto. It would be more plausi- 
ble were it shown how, at the end of the great cycle, 
there was renewal of the lost energy, and return to 
the nebulous beginning. Causation moves in cycles 
and the most alarming perturbations are balanced 



THE LOGIC OF RESULTS. 25 

by forces operating in other directions, so that the 
result is the preservation of order. Planets swing 
wide of their orbits for a million years, getting fur- 
ther and further away, yet the time comes when 
they return on a pathway carrying them as wide on 
the other side. 

This latest view of the universe, by scientific 
thought, however plausible its argument, or appar- 
ently logical its results, is proven by the very logic 
of those results to be defective. 

The Logic of Results.— It starts with the declara- 
tion that matter and force are inseparable, that there 
can be no matter without force. The nebulous be- 
ginning was a storehouse of energy, which has been 
wasting ever since the first world was formed. This 
force has been for countless ages dispersing by radi- 
ation. It is still wasting, for as it is radiated into 
space it does not even raise the temperature of the 
trackless abyss through which it passes. When it 
is all gone, there will be left the force of gravita- 
tion, holding with adamantine grasp the dead resid- . 
uum of suns and planets; and, strange conclusion 
to which these premises force us, this residuum must 
be matter without force. 

Here the problem remains unsolved, and a theory 
which proudly assumes for itself the distinction of 
being the only true system of nature, which rules 
God out of the universe, or makes Him an unknown 
and unknowable quantity, destroys life in nature, 
and has no means of its restoration except by a mir- 
acle. If the universe is a machine which in time 
will run down and die, all its force being dissipated, 
does it not follow that in the beginning some superior 
power united this force with matter ? And also, does 
it not follow that if this dead universe again lives, a 



26 WHAT THE SENSE 8 TEACH. 

superior power must draw back the scattered beams 
of light, heat, magnetism, and other forces, and re- 
endow the dead residuum ? 

Thus this materialistic hypothesis, which boasts 
arrogantly of its certitude, begins in assumption and 
ends in a dilemma out of which confession of ignor- 
ance and acceptance of miracle only can extricate it. 

Creation is not a clock that must be wound up at 
stated intervals by a foreign power, and any system 
which does not provide for its restoration as well as 
destruction, confesses weakness. 

The Choice of Causes. — We have this choice : To 
believe that forces by blind action and reaction 
have evolved the world from a nebulous fire-cloud 
and peopled it with sentient and intellectual be- 
ings, making of it a perpetual motion, a machine not 
designed, but the result of infinite failures, perfected 
by infinite blunders, and sustained by the fortuitous 
equilibrium of unseeing, unknowing forces ; or that 
back of these forces is an intelligence, planning and 
willing through their agency. If the latter be ac- 
cepted, it does not follow that the crude conception 
of design in nature as the direct work of a personal 
God must be maintained. At the commencement of 
the great revival of the study of nature, when the 
views which have revolutionized scientific thought 
were beginning to dawn, illy defined and partially 
understood, they were seized on by a class seeking 
support to the theological doctrines they felt yield- 
ing beneath their feet, and distorted by plausible 
sophistry into apparent vindication of their dogmas. 
Of these, Paley became most famous, his illustra- 
tion of the watch was the most renowned of his argu- 
ments. It is misleading, as there is no real likeness 
between a watch and the mechanism of nature. Yet 



EVOLUTION. 27 

we do not endorse the complacency of many leading 
supporters of evolution. Evolution is undoubtedly 
a true statement of the method of creation. It offers 
no further explanation and gives no cause. Accept- 
ing evolution and following the development of life 
from the least to the greatest, what do we see but the 
constant unfoldment of a well defined purpose and 
plan ? Are not the beings of the Silurian and De- 
vonian epoch prophecies of the forms which were 
evolved out of them ? We may call things by new 
names, and in place of design use "adaptation"; 
we do not change the relations of things thereby. 
When we see a bird cleave the air with rapid wings, 
and observe the wonderful adaptation of bones and 
muscles and forms of feathers, we may explain it 
all by evolution, which has made the bird the em- 
bodiment of the forces of the air. Have we done 
more than state the method of growth ? W^hat 
cause have we assigned for the process ? We see 
an interminable series of forms, changing from 
age to age, becoming more and more complex in 
their relations, but pressing forward constantly to 
final production of man as the perfection of the 
vertebrate type. Evolution describes this process, 
at every step furnishing evidence of a purpose, 
achieving its ends through matter, often failing, but 
through failures at last reaching its object. In this 
light the imperfection of organs proves nothing 
against design, The eye of man is instanced as 
more imperfect than a glass lens. It is as perfect 
as the organic material out of which it is made 
permits. That it becomes diseased is from the same 
necessity of organization. 

Evolution. — Evolution is a new name for facts ex- 
ceedingly old; but its supporters would have its 



28 WHAT THE SENSES TEACH. 

scheme reach through creation to the foundation of 
things. Advancement with them means only better 
adaptation in the struggle for existence, the result 
of accidental fitness which has pushed unorganized 
protoplasm to man. Matter and its potentialities 
granted, all else flows in assured course. Difficul- 
ties disappear ; the riddle of the Sphinx is no longer 
obscure. The sunlight has fallen on the marble 
lips, and Memnon has revealed in a single sentence 
what mortal man has never understood, "The 
survival of the fittest." The theologian has rested 
in blissful confidence in the arms of the Creator ; 
now comes the scientist who by easy methods calls 
the Creator "evolution," and falls as blindly con- 
fident into the arms of his new-named God. The 
likeness is made more complete by the scorn of one 
equaling the sneer of the other. 

It is a new name for the old fact, that the forms 
of life on this earth are united by common parent- 
age, and have been differentiated by the accumu- 
lation of infinite beneficial changes. The struggle 
for existence has been the center around which 
these have aggregated. This no careful student 
will deny. Having granted this, what then ? Is 
anything explained ? Have we approached the 
cause by a single step ? Really, has anything been 
done more than to explain the phenomena of the 
world with new words and phrases ? 

Of old it was said the world is a machine with 
gods or a god at the crank ; to-day the god at the 
crank is the Unknowable, the laws of nature, the 
potentiality of matter ; or in the most recent theory 
the all-god has appeared in the revival of the god 
imminent in the universe, which is reg-arded as an 
organism, with a god-soul. This is poetic but neither 
sensible nor scientific. Forever and forever old ideas 



THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 29 

are washed on the shore of time, out of the wreck 
of the past, and instead for being relegated to the 
museum, are galvanized into grimace of life, and 
branded as new, when they are rapidly disintegrat- 
ing in every part. 

The Survival of tlie Fittest.— The survival of the 
fittest is a wonderful scheme of the preservation of 
the best. To illustrate, take the tiger and the deer. 
Once they herded together, the tiger not being, as 
now, noted for strength or cunning, nor the deer 
for caution and fleetness. The dull tiger was able to 
take as prey the least cautious and weakest of the 
deer. The fleetest deer propagated, and then only 
the most cunning tigers were able to procure food,- 
and continue their kind. As their strength and cun- 
ning increased, the cautiousness and fleetness of the 
deer increased in this matched game of life; the two 
species reacting on each other until we now have 
the perfected deer and tiger. In both kingdoms of 
living beings, among all their diverse families and 
species, this struggle has gone on, and the result 
is the differentiation from abysmal protoplasmic 
slime the humming bird on the flower to the 
leviathan in the deep ; the litchen on the rock to 
man with an intellectual comprehension of un- 
known breadth. We here have the chronicle of 
creation, and Froisart was not more garrulous with 
his exploits of lord and lady than the chroniclers of 
the changes effected in specific forms "on their 
way to man." 

We hear all that is said, and with a feeling of dis- 
appointment, while admitting all, respond that we 
were promised a cause, and have been given only a 
method ? What stands behind the " struggle for ex- 
istence ?" What is the infinite force of the ceaseless 



30 WHAT THE SENSES TEACH. 

unrest, which throws each wave higher on the tide 
line, working like a blind giant, hewing out organic 
forms from protoplasm, and amid infinite failures 
approximating ever to the perfect, with constant 
prophecy that that perfection will be attained ? The 
" survival of the fittest" reveals the prodigal method 
which preserves one of a million germs, casting the 
others back into the seething crucible for new trials. 
Can it claim anything more ? The laws of nature are 
grooves in which causes run to effects ; but why do 
they thus move ? Calling them by other names will 
not satisfy. As Newton, when he gave the law of 
gravitation mathematical form, penetrated not a 
step toward its cause, so the biologist has not 
passed the threshold of the domain of life. A re- 
cent scientific association sat in silence after a 
verbose and flippant discussion on protoplasm, 
when asked by a member what was the difference 
between living and dead protoplasm ? Not one 
could answer. Life had escaped their observation. 
Protoplasm dead is no longer protoplasm. The 
protoplasmic germ impelled by the forces of life, 
commences its growth, sending out its feeding ves- 
sels, and from the beginning copies the paleonto- 
logical history of the earth, and more completely 
the biography of its direct ancestors. 

When we consider that this invisible fleck bears 
in its cell or cells the impress of every condition 
bearing on its progenitors from remotest time, and 
will express it in all these conditions, it is no longer 
a phenomenon on which we gaze, but a miracle of 
creative power, and all that has been written by 
physiologists since Galen's time as to its cause is as 
children's prattle. The material side furnishes no 
adequate explanation. Its coarse methods are not 
adapted to measure the illusive psyche. The balance 



THE EVOLUTIONIST. THE CHEMIST 31 

weighs not, the scalpel dissects not, the retort holds 
not the elements of the soul. 



Scientific Methods of the Study of 
Man, and Results. 



The Evolutionist. — Scientists have different ways 
of studying man. The evolutionist first develops 
the form. He says that life began in protoplasm 
in the unrecorded ages of the past, and step by 
step, through mollusk, fish, saurian and mammal, 
has arisen by the " struggle for existence" and "sur- 
vival of the fittest," until the mammal by strangely 
fortuitous chances has become a human being. As 
the human body is a modified animal form, so the in- 
tellect is a modified and developed instinct, the high- 
est, and mosU spiritual conscientiousness being only 
the result of accumulated experiences of what is for 
the best. The highest of animals is man, with no 
barrier between him and them, and subject to the 
same fate. There is no indication of a guiding in- 
telligence, and if he possess an immortal spirit, so 
does the mollusk and the fleck of protoplasm. 

The Chemist. — The chemist has his method, that 
of analysis. He takes the vital tissues and resolves 
them into their elementary parts. He tells us that 
there is so much hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen in 
the muscles ; so much lime and phosphorus in the 
bones ; so much phosphorus in the nerves, and iron 
in the blood. He separates these elements in retort 



32 SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MAN. 

or crucible, and weighs them with nicety so that he 
knows to a thousandth of a grain their proportions. 
He has made the ultimate analysis,, and these are all 
he can discover. Life is the result of their union ; 
mind the burning of phosphorus in the brain, and as 
for spirit, it is quite unnecessary to explain the phen- 
omena. The chemist has finished his work, and 
placed in the museum the results of his analysis. 
That body perhaps weighed one hundred and fifty 
pounds. In a large glass jar is the water it con- 
tained—clear, crystal water, such as flashes in the 
sunlight of a rainbow-arching shower, or a dewdrop 
sparkling on the petals of a lily. There are about 
eight or ten gallons of it, for the body is three-fourths 
water. There is a small jar of white powder repre- 
senting the lime ; another, still smaller, the silex ; 
another the phosphorus. There are homeopathic 
vials containing a trace of sulphur, of iron 3 mag- 
nesia, the potash, the soda, the salts and so on until 
the vials, great and small, contain more or less of al- 
most every element. Here we have what was once 
a human being. We have every thing that went to 
make him, except one, which lacking, these ele- 
ments are lifeless, and of no more value than water 
from the brook and earth from its banks % the vital, 
or psychic principle. Place the contents of all the 
lesser jars in the greater water jar, shake, dissolve, 
and manipulate, dead and inert they remain, and 
will remain so long as thus treated. The chemist 
in his analysis has made no account of the subtile 
principle which made these elementary atoms an 
expression of its purpose. The living form has its 
origin in the remote past, and its atoms were 
arranged and brought into union by a vital process 
which thus began; which must begin in this manner 
and traverse the same path. Phosphorus may be 



THE ANATOMIST. 83 

essential to give activity to the brain, and a given 
amount of thought may correspond to a fixed amount 
of phosphorus burned in nerve tissue. What of that ? 
We know that in one of these vials is all the phos- 
phorus that existed in one human being ; we may 
burn it all, and it will give flame, not intelligence. 
If intelligence comes from its burning, the process 
must take place in nerve cells organized for the 
purpose, and that structure must have been planned 
by superior thought. 

To call the ingredients of these bottles a human 
being would be like calling a pile of brick, mortar 
and lumber a house, except the comparison fails in 
the house being built by outside forces, while the 
living being must be organized from within. No 
mixing of the contents of these bottles and jars can 
evolve life, or even the smallest speck of proto- 
plasm. 

The Anatomist. — The third scheme is that of the 
anatomist, who with keen-edged scalpel bends over 
the body after life has gone out of it, and traces the 
course of arteries and veins, the form and location 
of nerves, the attachment of muscular fibers, and in 
connection with the physiologist defines the func- 
tions of each separate organ. An exquisitely fash- 
ioned machine it is, wonderfully and fearfully made, 
growing up from an invisible germ. After anato- 
mist and physiologist have finished, and on their dis- 
secting table only a mass of rubbish remains, they 
triumphantly point to it and exclaim: "See! We 
have settled the question of spirit ! There can be 
nothing beyond this organism. We have determined 
how every cell and fiber of it are put together, and 
the functions they perform. No where is there an 
indication of any thing superior or transcending this 



34 SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MAN. 

material form. Here is where the food is digested; 
here it is assimilated ; here this secretion is made ; 
here excretion of poisonous matter takes place ; here 
in the brain, in these gray cells, thought arises. Ah ! 
it is a wonderful complex machine." 

Indeed it is, and what has become of the power 
which moved it ? You have a strange machine, un- 
like all others, for it is, according to your ideas, an 
engine to make steam, instead of to be moved by it ; 
a mill to make a waterfall, instead of to be run by 
falling water. What is the difference between a 
dead man and a living one ? Incomprehensively 
great, and yet the dead man to the chemist, the 
anatomist, the biologist, is identically the same as 
the living. That unknown element, life, escapes the 
crucible, the retort, the scalpel, the microscope, and 
the conclusions of those who take it not into con- 
sideration are the vague conjecturing of children, 
who have gained but a half knowledge of the sub- 
jects that excite their attention. 

Yet science proudly claims the knowledge of all 
things possible to know. It has searched into the 
foundations of the earth and ascended the starry 
dome of infinitude; it grasps the inconceivably 
small and the inconceivably great ; it delves in the 
hard stratum of facts, and sports in the most sub- 
lime theories. It gives the laws of the dancing 
motes, and those which guide the movements of 
stellar worlds ; the sullen forces of the elements and 
the subtile agencies which sustain living beings. 

What is Beyond the Strife for Existence? — What, 

O Science, is there beyond the grave which shuts 
down with adamantine wall between this life and 
the future ? 

The answer comes : Beyond ? There is nothing. 



BEYOND THE STRIFE FOR EXISTENCE. S5 

Do not dream, but know the reality. What becomes 
of its music after the instrument is destroyed ? 
Where is the hum of the bee after the insect has 
passed on its busy wings ? Where is the light in the 
lamp after the oil is burned ? Where is the heat of 
the grate after the coal has burned ? Given the con- 
ditions and you have music, heat and light. When 
these conditions perish you have nothing. As the 
impinging of oxygen against carbon in the flame 
produces light and heat, so the combination of ele- 
ments in the nerves and brain produces the phen- 
omena of life and intelligence. As the liver secretes 
bile, so the brain produces thought. Destroy the 
brain and mind disappears, as the music when the 
instrument is broken. 

Look you and see the strife for existence. See 
you the myriads of human beings who have per- 
ished. The world is one vast charnel house, its 
material being worked over and over again in end- 
less cycle. Tooth and claw to rend and tear ; arrow, 
club, spear, sword, and gun to kill ; the weak to fall, 
the strong and brutal to triumph, to multiply, and 
advance by the slaughter of its own weaker mem- 
bers. The atom you can not see with unaided eye 
devours and is devoured, and ascending to man, he 
is by turns the slayer and the slain. 

There's not an atom of the earth's thick crust, 

Of earth or rock, or metals' hardened rust, 

But has a myriad times been charged with life, 

And mingled in the vortex of its strife ; 

And every grain has been a battlefield 

Where murder boldly rushed with sword and shield. 

Turn back the rocky pages of earth's lore, 

And every page is written o'er and o'er 

With wanton waste. The weak are for the strong, 

And Might is victor, whether right or wrong. 



36 SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MAN. 

Enameled armor and tesselated scale, 
With conic tooth that broke the flinty mail ; 
The shell protecting and the jaw which ground 
The shell to dust, there side by side are found ; 
The fin that sped the weak from danger's path, 
The stronger fin that sped the captor's wrath ; 
A charnel house where, locked in endless strife, 
Cycle the balanced forces, Death and Life. 

If you seek for a meaning or a purpose you will 
find none. What you call design is only the har- 
mony of fluctuating chances produced by countless 
failures. 

Philosophy. — Invoke philosophy with her robes of 
snow, pretending to a knowledge of the world and 
its infinite destiny ; it will tell you of the cycle of 
being ; the succession of generations ; that life and 
death complement each other, and that all you may 
hope for is change. Unceasing change is the abid- 
ing law, and he who grasps to hold, will find but 
shadows in his grasp. 

Religion. — Religion may teach us a pessimistic 
view of the world, and to bow like cringing slaves 
unquestioningly to the rod. We may accept that all 
is for the best whether we understand it or not, as the 
unalterable decree of fate, yet as rational beings we 
recoil from this bondage, and the questions are ever 
present, of the purpose of this life, and the evidences 
of that future of which the most doubting dream. 

Religion, resting as it does on the immortality, of 
the spirit, should answer us so plainly and absolutely 
that there could be no doubt. That there is weeping 
and broken hearts shows that it does not, or else 
that it makes that existence so terrible that the 
dread of it is more than that of annihilation. The 
fear of Hell, which has driven the world to madness, 
is now cast into the lumber room with other errors, 



RELIGION. 3? 

outgrown, and in the free atmosphere one can not 
understand the terrors it once awakened. The arbi- 
trary heaven is also passing away, and a more 
natural conception of the future life is gaining pre- 
cedent. Yet the words of teachers of religion are 
cold and soulless, and even the poets, touched by the 
finger of a decaying faith, voice the incredulity of 
the age in lines which speak only in despair. Oh ! 
poet of immortal song, how chilling to the heart the 
words that yet too often find response in its doubts 
and fears : 

"And the stately ships go on 

To their haven under the hill ; 
But oh ! for the touch of a vanished hand, 

And the sound of a voice that is still. 

"Break, break, break, 

At the foot of thy crags, O sea ! 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead, 

Will never come back to me." 

•There is little consolation to be found in these 
directions. Let us turn back to first principles ; let 
us for a time forget the claims of scientists and take 
up the book of nature at her plain alphabet and 
ascertain whether these claims of material science 
have a sure foundation. 



What is the Sensitive State ? 



A Race Without Sight. — If the human race were 
born without organs of vision, man could form no 
idea of the beautiful and splendid phenomena re- 
vealed to the eye. The normal state would be blind- 



38 WHAT IS THE SENSITIVE STATED 

ness. Day and night would be marked by intervals 
of repose and activity, but the cloudy midnight and 
the radiance of the sun, the glories of morning, the 
splendors of sunset, the star-gemmed canopy of 
the cloudless night, the infinite changes, the phan- 
tasmagoria of heaven and earth, would be unknown. 
The flowers might bloom in beauty, their fragrance 
would delight, but their form and color would be 
unrecognized. The mind, deprived of the infinite 
series of sensations which flow into it through the 
sense of vision, would have none of the conceptions 
thereby engendered. If a being who could see 
should attempt to reveal to the sightless race the 
beauties of the world as seen by the eye in the light, 
they would treat him as an impostor relating an idle 
tale, to them incomprehensible. 

A Race Without Hearing. — If to the deprivation 
of sight were added the loss of hearing, the vital 
powers would not be impaired ; the organic func- 
tions would continue the same, but all sounds would 
cease and perfect silence reign. The mind could 
form no conception of music, the songs of birds, the 
sighing of the wind, the roar of the storm, or the 
soft modulations of the human voice. As nature 
would be voiceless, so man would be dumb. The gift 
of speech would be lost with the power of receiv- 
ing the sounds of words. The soul, in silence and 
darkness, unable to communicate its thoughts with 
others, would be bereft of all the sensations, emo- 
tions, and conceptions which arise from seeing and 
hearing, nor could it be taught these by those who 
possessed these senses, for no conceptions could be 
formed of sights never seen, or sounds never heard. 

Sensitiveness. — In like manner, the sensitive con- 
dition reveals a universe which is unknown to the 



SENSITIVENESS. 39 

senses, and of which man is as profoundly ignorant 
as those born blind are of light. It is the heritage 
of all, yet manifested only at rare intervals in 
favored individuals. It is as it would be with the 
sense of sight, were thousands blind, while a few 
saw imperfectly, and only one with distinctness. 
The sight of that one would indicate what all might 
attain under favorable circumstances, as the per- 
ception of those who are sensitive shows what is 
possible in this direction. It is through this gateway 
that we are able to penetrate the arcana of a higher 
existence, and it is our purpose to go by easy steps 
along the pathway that leads into the vista stretch- 
ing beyond this portal, into unexplored regions, of 
which scarcely a conception has yet been formed. 

We have consciousness of spiritual realities, of an 
infinite after-life, and aspirations which it alone can 
satisfy, and for which this mortal sphere furnishes 
no provision. Shall we regard these aspirations as 
idle longings, and this consciousness as a baseless 
fancy ? Or have we spiritual energies which have 
called this spiritual nature into being ? 

The eye is created in conformity to the laws of 
light, to receive the rays and allow their impinge- 
ment on the optic nerves. It is proof of the exist- 
ence of light. . In the same manner, spiritual per- 
ception is evidence of the existence of spiritual 
energies. It would be quite as difficult for the mind 
to comprehend spiritual being, if without this con- 
sciousness, as for the blind to understand the beau- 
ties of light. 

Sensitiveness is a faculty pertaining to the spirit- 
ual nature, and is acute in proportion as that spirit- 
ual nature dominates the physical senses. It is 
possessed by all, and by a few in a remarkable de- 
gree. It is variable in the same individual, is often 



40 WHAT IS THE SENSITIVE STATE f 

the result of drugs, of fatigue, of sleep, and may be 
induced or intensified by hypnotism or mesmerism. 
It may manifest itself suddenly and at long inter- 
vals, once only in a lifetime, or be a steadfast 
quality. It may have all degrees of acuteness, from 
impressibility scarcely distinguishable from the in- 
dividual's own thoughts, to the purest independent 
clairvoyance. 

Conditions and Illustrations of Sensitiveness. — 

For one mind to influence another, the two must be 
in harmony, at least in certain points. The thought 
vibrations in one will not otherwise awake like 
vibrations in the other. Take for illustration two 
musical strings, one with fixed attachments, and 
the other with a moveable bridge or stop. Now if 
the first be set in vibration, the other, being on a 
different key, will not respond in unison, but the 
stop will slightly move ; and if the vibrations con- 
tinue, the stop will move forward until the exact 
length of chord is attained, and then both strings 
will vibrate in harmony, one repeating the notes of 
the other. 

If an hundred musical instruments were placed in 
a room, only two of which were tuned alike, if 
one of these were touched, its mate would respond, 
but the others would remain silent. 

These thought vibrations may be received sud- 
denly like a flash, as in the case of premonitions and 
warnings of danger, the sensitive state lasting but a 
brief time ; or it may be cultivated and become per- 
manent with the individual. The hypnotic, or som- 
nambulic subject, may be more or less affected at 
first, and slowly fall under the influence, until the 
continuous condition is the same as that in which a 
premonition is received. 



CONDITIONS OF SENSITIVENESS. 41 

As an illustration of the method by which this is 
accomplished, whether the operator be a spirit clad 
in a physical or in a celestial body, the improve- 
ments by age and use of the violin may be taken. 

This instrument, the most perfect of all in its 
capacity for expressing the delicate feelings of the 
soul, gains its soft sweetness and rich perfection by 
use and age. The cremona, worth its weight in 
gold, may once have been harsh, with dissonant 
tones, rasping to the ear. The Tyrolese maker 
selects the smoothest wood his mountain affords, 
clear of grain, and free from flaw or blemish. He 
carves the parts with sedulous care and exhaustless 
patience; swell and curve and hollow are wrought, 
polished, and cemented together so as to make them 
as one. Then the delicate strings are drawn over the 
bridge, and the instrument tested. It may squeak 
or jar, and refuse, even in a master's hands, to ex- 
press his desire. But with every vibration of the 
strings it improves. Every movement changes its 
fibers, and forces them into harmonious accord. 
After a time they will all be in unison. The play- 
ing of a single tune may not produce this result; a 
score or a thousand may not. It may pass from 
hand to hand, and generation after generation may 
grow old and die, as each successive master touches 
its strings, before all its deepest qualities are ex- 
pressed. Then its tones melt in voluptuous har- 
mony; wail with the broken hearted; fill the soul 
with the gladness of delight ; revive the murmur of 
the sombre pines; the song of the birds in the for- 
est; the laughing of falling waters; the hoarse voice 
of the tempest with hail and lightning flash, rush of 
winds and burst of clouds. Nature speaks through 
the instrument, and vibrates the heart with every 
emotion, passion, and aspiration. 



42 WHAT IS THE SENSITIVE STATE f 

In the same manner, if a being independent of, and 
detached from the physical body, should attempt to 
impress its thoughts on a sensitive, it might no 
more than partially succeed after many trials. 
Each effort, however, would be more successful, for 
thought vibrations constantly tend to efface the 
causes of discord, and if the Intelligence is patient, 
and the sensitive submissive, the thoughts of the 
former would at last flow uninterruptedly into or 
through the mind of the latter. 

And what is thus possible for a sensitive, in re- 
gard to an individual intelligence, is possible to 
acquire in relation to the thought atmosphere of the 
universe, or psychic-ether. If this be possible, if a 
being may become thus exquisitively sensitive, and 
receive the waves of thought as they traverse this 
ether, as the eye catches vibrations of light, that 
being would be a focus to receive the intelligence of 
all thinking beings in the universe. 

The sensitive state, then, is the outcropping in 
mortal life, in apparently abnormal form, of that 
which is normal to the spirit of life. We thus con- 
clude that its most astonishing development, as re- 
vealed, is immeasurably below its normal capabili- 
ties when freed from the limitation of the body. 
The permanent condition of a spiritual being after 
separation from the physical form must be that of 
the most perfect and delicately sensitive. What we 
see here in partial or total eclipse, is there in the 
glory of full light. 

Thoughts not Words Impressed.— While Max Miil- 
ler ardently supports his theory that thought itself 
depends upon the words which express it, Ave con- 
stantly meet with facts which indicate that the idea 
is conveyed from one mind to another, and there is 



ILLLUSTRATIONS OF SENSITIVENESS. 43 

clothed in words according to the culture of the re- 
ceiving mind. The vividness with which the idea 
is impressed insures the use of similar verbal cloth- 
ing. An instance is reported by Dapson, in Deleuze, 
where a sealed letter was given a very susceptible 
magnetic subject. It reads : 

"No other than the eye of Omnipotence can read 
this sentence in this envelope. 

Troy, New York, Aug. 1837." 

The subject read it : 

"No other than the eye of Omnipotence can read 
this in this envelope. 1837." 

He omitted " sentence/' and all the date but the 
year. It is to be observed that in all instances of 
thought transference or sensitiveness, the repro- 
duction of names, dates, etc., expressed by arbitrary 
words, are the most difficult and unreliable, and this 
has been a source of doubt, and an argument against 
the truthfulness of the magnetic subject. 

It requires a deeper hypnotic state to receive 
dates and names correctly, than connected ideas. It 
is because ideas and not the verbal form are received, 
that culture becomes of greatest value connected 
with sensitiveness, as will be amplified in a succeed- 
ing section, treating on misconceived sensitiveness, 
whereby is made possible the seemingly superhu- 
man achievements of authors, philosophers, sages, 
statesmen, and inventors. It will also be more ex- 
tendedly treated of in the chapter devoted to the 
consideration of Dreams. 



44 THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

Sensitive State: Its Division into 

Mesmeric, Somnambulic, and 

Clairvoyant. 



The Sixth Sense. — In the normal state we know 
and understand the external world through and by 
the senses. The eye reveals to us the beauties of 
light, and by its aid the wondrous diversities of 
nature. The ear brings to the mind the varied 
sounds, makes oral speech and the sweet harmonies 
of music possible. The organ of smell sentinels 
the citadel of health against pestiferous odors, and 
gives the exquisite enjoyment of perfumes. Ordi- 
narily we rely on these senses as our guides, and so 
complete is our reliance that we recognize no other 
avenue to knowledge of the external world; yet at 
times we find that our minds extend beyond the 
senses and have capabilities which can not be re- 
ferred to them. There is an interior perception, 
which has been called the sixth sense, which, sensi- 
tive to impressions from supernal sources, at times 
rises above all the others. It is through this sense 
or better, this sensitive state, that we gain an in! 
sight into the spiritual nature of man. The senses 
would lead us away to a gross materialism, for they 
belong to the animal organization ; this sensitive- 
ness leads us in an opposite direction. We find 
through it another nature overlaid and obscured by 
the senses and their understanding. This sensitive 
state is the activity of the spiritual being, in the 
ratio of its perfection, and is really as normal as the 



THE SENSITIVE STATE. 45 

most sensuous condition. The study of this state is 
the gateway to the understanding of our spiritual 
being, and the first lesson it teaches is that man is a 
dual creation ; a spirit, an intelligent entity, clothed 
with, and circumscribed by, a physical body. Only 
so far as that body interferes with the activity of 
the spirit, is it of interest to us in the present dis- 
cussion, which relates entirely to the spirit. 

This sensitive state is possessed by many, and in 
many more it may be induced by proper means. It 
may be laid down as a rule that whatever weakens 
the physical faculties strengthens this spiritual per- 
ception. Thus it is often manifested in disease, after 
fatigue, or in the negative hours of sleep. Some 
drugs have the power of inducing it, and mesmer- 
ism is the strongest of all artificial means. I use the 
term sensitive with the meaning here given, and 
from that meaning shall not deviate. Many who 
possess this power in a slight degree may not dis- 
tinguish its perceptions from those of the senses 
with which they blend, but there are times when 
the mind passes into an entirely different state from 
that of its normal activity, that of sensitive recep- 
tivity, and what is usually termed intuition is in- 
tensified. I propose to study this sensitive state first 
in connection with that of wakefulness, and then 
with that of sleep ; and from simple thought-read- 
ing to the reception of thought from supernal 
sources. 

Hitherto the discussion of spirit has been con- 
sidered impracticable by scientific methods, and 
theology and metaphysics have occupied the field. 
In this border-land between the known and the un- 
known, ignorance and charlatanry have held high 
carnival, an,d those who love scientific accuracy 
perhaps are excusable in regarding the belief in 



46 THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

spiritual beings as a superstition ; yet there has ac- 
cumulated as folk lore, as myths, as an outside, 
out-of-the-way literature, a vast mass of material, 
some of which, it is true, is mere rubbish, through 
which gleams bright veins of truth, showing the 
close relations between the seen and the unseen 
universes. Here and there a sensitive mind has re- 
ceived the light in clearer effulgence, and made 
the surrounding gloom more densely impenetrable. 
At remote intervals the oriflame of the spiritual con- 
ception of nature has flashed athwart the intervals 
of gross materialism, but religion, moral conduct, 
not knowledge, has been the motive. This age de- 
mands knowledge for its own sweet sake, assured 
that the highest morality will flow therefrom. In 
the study of the conditions of the mind, the various 
states of sleep, clairvoyance, somnambulism, etc., 
will be defined and illustrated. 

Sleep. — Sleep is the "twin sister of death" only in 
appearance, for aside from poetic fancy, sleep is the 
negative condition of activity. In perfect sleep all 
the faculties of the mind are in repose, and the 
bodily functions go on with the least waste. It is 
essentially restful and recuperative. The waste of 
the body, its wear and tear of muscle and nerve is 
repaired ; new cells take the place of those broken 
down, and the debris moves slowly forward to the 
excretory organs and is eliminated. 

In this state of negative repose there is no mani- 
festation of thought, and it is as unlike the clair- 
voyant or sensitive state as that of wakefulness; 
but shaded into this state of sleep, as into that of 
wakefulness, are various degrees of sensitiveness. 
The conditions of sleep are provocative of this im- 
pressibleness. Night is negative; the silence and 



MESMERIC STATE. 47 

the vail of darkness shutting out external ob- 
jects conduce to make the mind negative and 
susceptible. 

At midnight is the culmination of this negative- 
ness, and hence the ghastly dread of that hour 
has a foundation in fact, and is not an idle super- 
stition Ghosts may never appear, yet if they were 
to appear the midnight hour, of all others, would be 
assigned by the student cognizant of this fact for 
them to come like shafts of frozen moonshine, into 
the walks of men. 

Mesmeric State. — Mesmerism, under whatever 
name, animal magnetism, hypnotism, etc., is a 
potent means in the study of psychology. It has 
made it possible to command many of the most 
evanescent phenomena, and allow of their careful 
examination, when otherwise they came at rare in- 
tervals and at such unexpected moments as made it 
impossible to carefully compare and study them. 
Somnambulism, clairvoyance, and that state of ex- 
quisite sensitiveness which makes us receptive of 
impressions transformed into dreams, may be com- 
manded in a sensitive, and observed at leisure. 

In the commencement we must free ourselves 
from the commonly received idea that sleep has any 
resemblance to any of these several states which are 
usually called magnetic, mesmeric, or clairvoyant 
sleep. As already stated, sleep is the negative 
of being, and more distinct from these states of ex- 
alted perception than waking, The incongruous 
and often incoherent visions which arise in the 
half-waking state, or when only a part of the 
mental faculties are at rest, are the ordinary 
dreams, which have no significance, and are very 
different in their origin and meaning from the im- 



48 THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

pressions received in the sensitive state, which is 
one of intense wakefulness and activity. The sen- 
sitive condition is possessed in a marked degree by 
about one in five, and may be induced in a still 
larger ratio. It is more frequently found in wo- 
men than in men. It may be cultivated, and be- 
come an important factor in the character and hap- 
piness of the individual. 

We will simply for convenience divide the sensi- 
tive state into the hypnotic, somnambulic and clair- 
voyant ; but it must be borne in mind that these 
merge into each other ; and that no sharp line can 
be drawn between them. 

Mesmerism may be regarded as the method by 
which all of these states may be induced. The 
mesmeric state is equivalent to the hypnotic. 'After 
years of delay, mesmerism has been accepted under 
another name, that of hypnotism ; but the theory 
of a " fluid" or specific influence is discarded. Hyp- 
notists cannot, however, exceed the most common 
experiments without the facts demanding even as a 
working hypothesis, this specific influence. 

The ticking of a watch held close to the ear, or in- 
tensely gazing at some object, will throw a sensitive 
into an abnormal condition, at the mercy of the 
"dominant idea," and he becomes an automaton in 
the hands of an external influence. This is the 
hypnotic state, beyond which the "dominant idea" 
fails. A sensitive may be led by a "dominant 
idea," but soon manifests a power which stretches 
beyond into an unexplored region of possibilities, 
exhibiting mental perceptions far more acute than 
those possess who are around him, or he himself 
possesses in his normal condition. Hypnotism as 
treated by its exponents is an extremely compli- 
cated state, ranging from the cataleptic to the in- 



MESMERIC STATE. 49 

dependent Clairvoyant. To define it with the usual 
narrow meaning is extremely misleading and un- 
scientific. 

There are two distinct states of hypnotism. The 
first is that in which most platform experiments are 
made. The sensitive is capable of carrying on con- 
versations, answering questions, and is governed 
by a "dominant idea," believing all the operator 
wishes, and doing as commanded. 

The sensitive rapidly enters the next stage, when 
he becomes insensible to pain, and irresponsive to 
the address of any one except the operator. Until 
this stage is reached consciousness and memory are 
retained, a fact fatal to the theory of automatic ac- 
tion or "unconscious cerebration." In this profound 
state the sensitive has no memory of events which 
occur. It is an induced, incipient somnambulism, 
the true counterpart of that which under proper 
condition appears spontaneously. 

The report of the Committee on Hypnotism, vol. 
L, p. 95, of Proceedings of American Society for 
Psychical Research, shows that it confined its atten- 
tion to fifty or sixty students of Harvard College. 
Of these about a dozen were affected, and of these, 
two were so good that attention was confined to 
them. 

" The extraordinary mixture, in the hypnotic 
trance, of preternatural refinement of discrimina- 
tion with the grossest insensibility, is one of the 
most remarkable features of the condition. A blank 
sheet of paper, with fine-cut edges, without water- 
marks or any thing which could lead to the recogni- 
tion of one side or edge from the other, is shown to 
the subject with the statement that it is a photo- 
graph of a well-known face. As soon as he distinctly 
sees the photograph upon its surface, he is told that 



50 THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

it will float off from the paper, make a voyage 
around the walls of the room, and then return to the 
paper again. During this imaginary performance, 
he sees it successfully on the various regions of the 
wall ; but if the paper is meanwhile secretly turned 
over, and handed to him upside down, or with its 
under surface on top, he instantly recognizes the 
change, and seeing the portrait in the altered posi- 
tion of the paper, turns the latter about, ' to get the 
portrait right. ' " 

In the hypnotic state the subject is under the con- 
trol of the operator, and in a great degree an auto- 
maton ; in the somnambulic, he in part regains his 
individuality, and in certain lines of thought and 
action is superior to himself in his waking moments. 
Natural somnambulism comes without warning, 
and illustrates the condition induced by mesmeric 
passes. 

Somnambulism .—Sleep waking, or sleep walking, 
whatever may be its cause, mental derangement by 
disease or intense exertion of mind or body, or a con- 
stitutional inclination thereto, is of deepest interest 
to the psychologist as proving the independence of 
the spirit of the physical senses. The somnambulist 
has lost the use of his senses. He feels, hears and 
sees nothing by touch, ear or eye, and 3^et the ob- 
jects to which his attention is drawn are plainly 
perceptible. 

The Archbishop of Bordeaux is authority for the 
following narrative : A young clergyman was in the 
habit of rising from his bed, and writing his ser- 
mons while asleep. When he had written a page he 
would read it aloud and correct it. Once in altering 
the expression " ce devin enfant," he substituted the 
word "adorable" for "devin" which, commencing 



SOMNAMBULISM. 51 

with a vowel, required that " ce" before it should be 
changed to " cet j" he accordingly added the "t"* 
While he was writing the Archbishop held a piece 
of pasteboard under his chin to prevent him seeing 
what he was writing, but he went on without being 
in the least incommoded. The paper on which he 
was writing was removed and another piece substi- 
tuted, but he at once perceived the change. He also 
wrote pieces of music with his eyes closed. He once 
wrote the words under the notes too large, but dis- 
covering his mistake, he erased and rewrote them. 
He certainly did not see with his eyes and yet the 
vision was perfect. 

The case of Jane C. Rider, known as the Spring- 
field somnambulist, created in its time much 
wonder and speculation among intelligent persons 
acquainted with the facts. A full account of it was 
published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Jour- 
nal, Volume XL, Numbers 4 and 5. Miss Eider 
would walk in her sleep, attend to domestic duties 
in the dark or with her eyes bandaged, and read 
in a dark room with her eyes covered with cot- 
ton batting, over which was tied a black silk hand- 
kerchief. She learned without difficulty to play at 
backgammon while in this state, and would gen- 
erally beat her antagonist, though in her normal 
state she knew nothing about the game. 

A young lady, while at school, succeeded in her 
Latin exercises without devoting much time or at- 
tention to them, apparently. At length the secret 
of her easy progress was discovered. She was ob- 
served to leave her room at night, take her class- 
book, and go to a certain place on the banks of a 
small stream, where she remained but a short time 
and then returned to the house. In the morning 
she was invariably unconscious of what had oc- 



52 THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

curred during the night; but a glance at the les- 
son of the day usually resulted in the discovery 
that it was already quite familiar to her. 

A young man on a farm in Australia, after a hard 
day's work, went to sleep on a sofa; after some 
little time he arose, passed through several gates, 
opening and fastening them. Reaching the shed, 
he took off his coat, sharpened his shears, caught 
a sheep, and had just finished shearing it when his 
companions came with lanterns in search of him. 
The shock of awaking caused him to tremble like 
a leaf, but he soon recovered. The sheep was 
shorn as perfectly as if the work had been done in 
broad daylight. 

Moral Effect of Mesmerism.— Dr. Voisin recom- 
mends a s ggestive application of mesmerism. He 
experimented on a coarse, debauched and lazy wo- 
man, who was susceptible to magnetism ; and kept 
her in the mesmeric sleep ten or twelve hours' a 
day, and to its value as a curative agent he added 
moral education. During her sleep he suggested 
ideas of obedience, of submission, of decency, and 
exhorted her to useful labor. In this sleep she 
memorized whole pages of moral books. A com- 
plete transformation was effected in her in a few 
months. 

What a glorious field here opens for the moral 
reformer ! The calloused criminal who will not . 
listen to moral suasion, deaf alike to entreaty and 
prayer, may be hypnotized, and in that susceptible 
condition taught the Lord's Prayer and moral pre- 
cepts ; his moral nature roused and thus be trans- 
formed into a new being. The influence of some 
men when brought into contact with criminals is 
explained by their strong mesmeric or hypnotic in- 



TRANCE AND CLAIRVOYANCE. 53 

fiuence. They always lift up those they control. 
They are born masters, though they may not un- 
derstand the cause of their strength. 

Trance and Clairvoyance. — The trance or clair- 
vayant state has been observed in all ages and 
among all races of mankind. It has, in seasons of 
great religious excitement, become epidemic, the 
devotee falling in convulsions, becoming cataleptic, 
and after hours, days, or even months of apparent 
death, awakening with mind overwrought with 
visions of the strange world in which it had dwelt 
during the period of unconsciousness. 

The records of clairvoyance are as old as history. 
If prophecy, the "clear seeing of the future," be its 
fruit, the prophets and sages of the past were all 
more or less endowed with this gift. Socrates and 
Apollonius predicted, and were conscious of, events 
transpiring at remote distances. Cicero mentions 
that when the revelations are being given, someone 
must be present to record them, as "these sleepers 
do not retain any recollection of them." Pliny, 
speaking of the celebrated Hermotimus, of Clazo- 
menese, remarks that his soul separated itself from 
the body, and wandered in various parts of the 
earth, relating events occurring in distant places. 
During the period of inspiration his body was in- 
sensible. The day of the battle of Pharsalia, Cor- 
nelius, a priest of profound piety, described while in 
Padua, as though present, every feature of the fight. 
Nicephorus says that when the unfortunate Valens, 
taking refuge in a barn, was burned by the Goths, a 
hermit named Paul, in a fit of ecstacy, cried out to 
those who were with him: "It is now that Valens 
burns." Tertulian describes two females, celebrated 
for their piety and ecstacy, that they entered that 



54 . THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

state in the midst of the congregation, revealed 
celestial secrets, and knew the innermost hearts of 
persons. 

St. Justin affirms that the sibyls foretold events 
correctly, and quotes Plato as coinciding with him 
in that view. St. Athenagoras says of the faculty 
of prescience, that "it is proper to the soul." Vol- 
umes might be readily filled with quotations like the 
foregoing, showing that clairvoyance has been re- 
ceived as true by profound thinkers in every age. 
Swedenborg, Zschokke, Davis, are not peculiarities 
of modern times, but repetitions of Socrates, Apol- 
lonius, and countless others who deeply impressed 
their personality on their times. 

What is Clairvoyance? — Clairvoyance is a peculiar 
state of impressibility, presenting gradations from 
semi - consciousness to profound and death-like 
trance. Whether natural, or induced by artificial 
means, the attending phenomena are similar. In 
its most perfect form the body is in deepest sleep. 
A flame may be applied to it without producing the 
quiver of a nerve; the most pungent substances 
have no effect on the nostrils ; pins or needles thrust 
into the most sensitive part give no pain ; surgical 
operations may be performed without being felt. 
Hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling, as well as see- 
ing, are seemingly independent of the physical 
organs. The muscular system is either relaxed or 
rigid ; the circulation impeded in some cases until 
the pulse becomes imperceptible; and respiration 
leaves no stain on a mirror held over the nostrils. 

In passing into this state, the extremities become 
cold, the brain congested, the vital powers sink, a 
dreamy unconsciousness steals over the faculties of 
the mind. There is a sensation of sinking or float- 



CLAIRVOYANCE. 55 

ing. After a time the perceptions become intensi- 
fied ; we can not say the senses are intensified, for 
they are of the body, which for the time, is in- 
sensible. 

The mind sees without the physical organs of 
vision, hears without the organs of hearing, and 
feeling becomes a refined consciousness, which 
brings it en rapport with the intelligence of the 
world. The more death-like the conditions of the 
body, the more lucid the mind, which for the time 
owes it no fealty. 

If, as there is every reason to believe, clairvoyance 
depends on the unfolding of the spirit's perception, 
then the extent of that unfolding marks the degree 
of its perfection. However great or small this may 
be, the state itself is the same, differing only in de- 
gree, whether observed in the Pythian or Delphic 
oracle, the visions of St. John, the trance of Mo- 
hammed, the epidemic catalepsy of religious re- 
vivals, or the illumination of Swedenborg. The 
revelations made have a general resemblance, but 
they are so colored by surrounding circumstances 
that they are extremely fallible. The tendency of 
the trance is to make objective the subjective ideas 
acquired by education. This is exhibited in cases of 
religious ecstacy and trance, when the subject sees 
visions of winged angels and of Christ ; transform- 
ing dogmas and beliefs into objective realities. 
Such revelations, of course, have no more value than 
the iLlusory visions of the fever-stricken patient. 

Yet there is a profound state which sets this aside, 
and divests the mind of all trammels, and brings it 
into direct contact with the thought atmosphere of 
the world — the phycho-ether. Time and space for 
it, then, have no existence, and matter is trans- 
parent. 



56 THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

The weakening of the physical powers by disease 
is favorable to sensitiveness. As the senses are 
deadened, the powers of the interior consciousness 
are quickened, and a new world rises above the 
horizon of the corporeal senses. 

Evidence of the truth of clairvoyance was given 
in the Brooklyn Eagle, soon after the loss of the 
'■'Arctic," in 1854. The wife, son and daughter of 
Captain Collins were making the tour of Europe, 
and the Captain, to gratify a passing whim, con- 
sulted a clairvoyant as to their locality. The answer 
was that they were at that time visiting a church, 
which was accurately described. When the wife's 
letter came, it contained a narrative of a visit to a 
church at exactly the same hour, describing it as 
the clairvoyant had done, thus showing that the 
communication was quite correct. 

As the family had arranged to return on the 
"Arctic," and as the ship was a day late, of course 
Captain Collins became anxious. Sunday and Mon- 
day passed without news from the ship, and his 
anxiety increased. He thought of the clairvoyant 
and called on her. At first, although apparently 
deeply entranced, she could see nothing. Every- 
thing was in a cloud. At length she was able to see 
the three persons standing on the deck of a ship, 
amid great confusion, and almost concealed in fog 
and mist. This was all she could discern. This was 
nearly two days before the telegraph announced the 
loss of the "Arctic," and the arrival of a boat-load 
of survivors on the Canadian coast. But the Collins 
family were not among the saved. 

If we compare what may be called artificially in- 
duced with the spontaneous clairvoyance, we shall 
find them similar. The first example is of a sensi- 
tive, a youth of seventeen, who was blindfolded by 



CLAIRVOYANCE FROM DISEASE. 57 

means of soft paper folded double, and then gummed 
over his eyelids, and a silk handkerchief tied 
over this paper. Under these circumstances the 
sensitive was able to take a pack of cards and select 
any one called for, read the pages of a book, al- 
though those present were ignorant of the words, 
his sensitiveness being entirely independent of the 
knowledge of those around him. 

Clairvoyance from Disease. — There are instances 
where persons have fallen into this sensitive or clair- 
voyant state by disease or a nervous shock, and in 
the prolonged trance which followed, manifested all 
the phenomena usual to the induced somnambulic 
or clairvoyant state, even in higher degree. Of these 
Mollie Fancher is one of the best examples. She was 
called the " sleepless girl of Brooklyn," and for nine 
years, it is claimed by competent authority, did not 
sleep, and ate so little food that it was claimed she 
did not partake of any. She was, at fifteen years of 
age, healthy, but delicately organized. At that time 
she was thrown from a street car, and her head and 
body injured. A day or two afterwards she was 
seized with violent spasms. One by one her senses 
failed. Sight was first to leave, and hearing fol- 
lowed. Then she lost her speech, and then the abil- 
ity to swallow. This last she had not been known to 
exercise for nine years, and during the same length 
of time her eyelids were closed. She took no sleep, 
unless the intervals of trance be called sleep. She 
was breathless and rigid as dead. These spasms 
lasted less than a minute, and were accompanied 
with, or followed by, violent muscular contortions. 

Her lower limbs became twisted entirely around 
each other. Her right arm was bent upward and 
doubled under her head. She had no use of her right 



58 THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

hand at all, and of the left hand only the thumb and 
little finger. Lying all the time, night and day, upon 
her right side, her right hand cramped under her 
neck, and only her left free, with closed eyes, and 
working back of her head, as she was forced to do, 
she wrought the most exquisite worsted work and 
wax flowers. The darkness or light were all the same 
to her ; in fact, the light was painful to her, and even 
the gas-light was placed in the further corner of the 
room and shaded. She regained hearing and speech 
after several years, but otherwise her conditions 
remained unchanged. She knew the thoughts of 
those who came near her ; printed pages or a sealed 
letter held in her hand back of her head were 
readily read. Mr. Henry Parkhurst made many 
experiments to test her powers. She repeatedly 
read sealed letters he gave her, and, as a crucial 
test, he took a letter at random from the waste 
basket of an acquaintance, tore it in strips, and then 
cut the stripes into squares. He shook the pieces 
well together, put them into an envelope, and sealed 
it. This he handed the blind girl. She passed her 
hand over it several times, took a pencil and wrote 
the letter verbatim. Mr. Parkhurst opened the 
envelope, arranged the pieces, and found she had 
made a perfect copy. 

Not satisfied, with the assistance of two friends, 
Mr. Parkhurst secured an ancient mining report, 
yellow with age, and with averted face, so that he 
might not see the contents, he tore out a page of 
tabulated figures with explanation. This he folded 
and tore into scores of pieces. Some of the pieces 
fell on the floor and were allowed to remain there. 
The others he put in an envelope and sealed, and 
handed to one of his assistants, who put it in an- 
other envelope, which he also sealed and handed to 



CLAIRVOYANCE FROM DISEASE, 59 

the third, who enclosed it in the same manner. 
Then the party went to Miss Fancher's room, and 
asked her to give them the contents of the envelope. 
She took it in her hand and wrote, " It is nonsense ; 
. figures in which there are blank places, words that 
are incomplete, and sentences in which words are 
missing. " She wrote on, in some sentences skip- 
ping three or four words, and began with the last 
five letters of a word having ten letters. The table 
of figures she made contained blank spaces, but she 
wrote it out ; and the gentleman returned to Mr. 
Parkhurst's, where they arranged the pieces in their 
original form. They found that the copy made by 
Miss Fancher was absolutely correct, and the blank 
spaces represented the pieces left on the floor. 
When these were fitted in, the broken sentences 
were complete. 

Dr. Spier, from the first her attending physician, 
watched her case with unrelenting vigilance, and 
made a full record of her changing symptoms. One 
day he received a note from her, warning him that 
an attempt would be made to rob him, and the next 
day the attempt was made. She knew when he 
was coming, and would mention the moment he 
started from his residence, a mile away. In the 
early stages of her illness, Dr. Spier adminstered an 
emetic to test whether the claim that she had not 
partaken of food was true. It gave her great pain, 
and proved that her stomach was empty. She well 
knew the nature of the medicine, although pur- 
posely he attempted to keep it from her. Soon after 
she went into the rigid condition which lasted nine 
years. When she began to recover, the memory of 
these nine years was gone, and she only remem- 
bered the incidents of the previous. Nine years and 
a half after adminstering the test, when Dr. Spier 



60 THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

entered the room, Miss Fancher broke out with : 
"You thought I didn't know you gave me that 
medicine, but I did. You wanted to learn if food 
was in my stomach, but found none there. It made 
me very sick. You will not do so again, will you ?" 
Thus she returned after all that time to the 
thought which she had at the moment of entering 
on that strange experience. She had a double life, 
and did not remember anything which occurred in 
her trance. 

A Similar Case in England. — The case of Mollie 
Fancher is not alone, although, perhaps, not more 
remarkable than that of Miss Eliza Hamilton, of 
England. A physician visited her in 1882, when 
she was fourteen years of age. He found that 
in 1881 she had met with a severe injury which 
had caused paralysis of her limbs and right arm. 
She had been treated at the hospital for four 
months, at the end of which time she ceased to take 
food and returned home. He saw her about two 
months thereafter, and thus speaks of her: "She 
frequently passes into a trance condition, in which 
her left arm becomes as stiff and immovable as her 
right one. She sings hymns and repeats passages 
from the Bible, but is quite insensible to pain when 
pinched or pricked with a pin ; nor does she hear 
or speak when addressed. When she revives, she 
tells her friends that she has been to various places 
and seen various people, and describes conversa- 
tions which she has had, and objects she has seen 
in the rooms of persons she has been visiting. 
These descriptions, on inquiry, are found to be cor- 
rect. ... At times she speaks of having been 
in the company of persons with whom she was ac- 
quainted in this world, but who have passed away ; 



CLAIRVOYANCE FROM DISEASE. 61 

and she tells her friends that they have become 
much more beautiful, and have cut off the infirmi- 
ties with which they were afflicted while here. She 
often describes events which are about to happen to 
her, and are always fulfilled exactly as she pre- 
dicts." 

Her father read in her presence a letter he had re- 
ceived from a friend in Leeds, speaking of the loss 
of his daughter, about whose fate he and his family 
were very unhappy, as she had disappeared nearly a 
month before and left no trace. Eliza went into the 
trance state, and cried out, "Rejoice ! I have found 
the lost girl ! She is happy in the angel world." 
She said the girl had fallen into dark water where 
dyers washed their cloths ; that her friends could 
not have found her had they sought her there, but 
now the body had floated a few miles and could be 
found in the River Aire. The body was found as 
described. 

Now, knowing that her eyes were closed, that she 
could not hear, that her bodily senses were in pro- 
found lethargy, how are we to account for the in- 
tensity and keenness of sight, the quick deftness of 
figures enabling her to make the most beautiful 
contrast of colors in her worsteds, or the delicate 
adjustment of the petals of her flowers ? Her men- 
tal powers were exceedingly exalted, and scarcely 
a question could be asked her but she correctly an- 
swered. 

In this case the independence of the mind of the 
physical body shown in every instance of clairvoy- 
ance, is proven beyond cavil or doubt. If it is 
demonstrated that the mind sees without the aid 
of eyes, hears when the ears are deaf, feels when 
the nerves of sensation are at rest, it follows that 
it is independent of these outward avenues, and has 



62 THE SENSITIVE STATE. 

other channels of communication with the external 
world essentially its own. 

It must be here observed that as long as the mind 
•. is united with the body, usually the physical senses 
overlay and conceal the higher pyschic faculties. 
I The mind seemingly is dependent on the body, and 
is changeful to corporeal conditions. It becomes 
enfeebled by disease, by accidents to the brain, and 
at times disappears, like a lingering spark from a 
flame, in the dotage of age. This, however, is only 
external appearance, arising from the limitations 
fixed by the contact with physical matter, as the 
light of the sun may be shut out by an opaque 
body. 

The case of Laura Bridgeman is an illustration 
and evidence from another point of view that the 
intellect is, in a measure at least, independent of the 
senses. Completely deprived of sight and hearing 
at an early period of childhood, she was a blind and 
deaf mute. She never had any knowledge, through 
the eyes, of the bright landscape, of the glorious sun, 
morning and evening, the blue sky, the floating 
clouds, the waving trees, the green hills, the beauti- 
ful flowers. All was darkness and profound night. 
She never heard the exquisite notes of harmony, of 
instrument or modulated voice, the sigh of winds, 
the carol of birds. To her all had been unbroken 
silence. Dr. Howe, her kind and angelic teacher, 
says : "As soon as she could walk she began to ex- 
plore the rooms of the house. She became familiar 
with forms, density, weight, and heat, of every 
article she could lay her hands upon. . . . An 
attempt was made to give her knowledge of arbi- 
trary signs by which she could interchange thoughts 
with others. There was one of two ways to be 
adopted : Either to go on and build up a language 



CLAIRVOYANCE FROM DISEASE. 63 

of signs which she had already commenced her- 
self, or to teach her the purely arbitrary language 
in common use ; that is, to give her a sign for every 
individual thing, or to give her a knowledge of let- 
ters, by combinations by which she could express 
her ideas of the existence, and the mode and condi- 
tion of existence of anything. The former would 
have been easy, but very ineffectual ; the latter 
seemed difficult, but if accomplished, very effectual- 
I determined, therefore, to try the latter." 

After describing the process by which he taught 
her to associate names with things, he goes on to 
say; "Hitherto the process had been mechanical, 
and the success about as great as teaching a know- 
ing dog a variety of tricks. The poor child had sat 
in mute amazement, and patiently imitated every- 
thing her teacher did. But now the truth began to 
flash upon her ; her intellect began to work : she 
perceived that here was a way by which she could 
herself make up a sign of anything that was in her 
mind, and show it to another mind, and at once her 
countenance lighted up with a human expression. 
It was no longer a dog or a parrot ; it was an im- 
mortal soul, eagerly seizing upon a link of union 
with other spirits ! I could almost fix upon the 
moment the truth first dawned upon her mind, and 
spread its light to her countenance. I saw that the 
great obstacle was overcome, and henceforth noth- 
ing but patient perseverance, and plain, straight- 
forward efforts were to be used." 

At the end of the year, a report of the case was 
made, from which the following extract is taken : 
"It has been ascertained beyond a possibility of a 
doubt, that she can not see a ray of light, can not 
hear the least sound, and never exercises her sense 
of smell if she has any. Thus her mind dwells in 



64 SENSITIVENESS PROVED BY PYSCHOMETRY. 

darkness and stillness, as profound as that of a 
closed tomb at midnight. Of beautiful sights, sweet 
sounds, and pleasant odors, she has no perception ; 
nevertheless, she is happy and playful as a lamb, a 
bird, and the enjoyment of her intellectual faculties, 
or the acquirement of a new idea, gives her a vivid 
pleasure, which is plainly marked in her expressive 
features. ... In her intellectual character, it 
was pleasing to observe an insatiable thirst for 
knowledge and a quick perception of the relation 
of things. In her moral character, it is beautiful 
to behold her continued goodness, her keen enjoy- 
ment of existence, her expansive love, her unhesi- 
tating confidence, her sympathy with suffering, her 
conscienciousness, truthfulness and hopefulness." 

Her spirit was locked within her body without the 
least contact with the world through the most use- 
ful senses ; yet she not only thought, but thought in 
the same manner as those who possess these senses 
in perfection. If thought depends on the senses, 
then the quality of thought should change when de- 
prived of the senses. It is true that when thus fet- 
tered in expression, it does not escape the limitations 
of its surroundings, yet in the struggle we see the 
indication of the limitless possibilities of the spirit 
when these are cast aside. 



Sensitiveness Proved by Psychometry. 



Light emanating from suns and worlds, as it 
wings its swift way across the regions of space, 
bears on its rays the pictures of every object from 



PSYCHOMETRIC IMAGES. 65 

which it is emptied or reflected, and hence the uni- 
verse, from center to remotest bounds, is filled with 
pictures ; is a vast storehouse of photographs of all 
events from the fading of a leaf to the revolution of 
a world since time began. Thus a ray of light leav- 
ing the earth during the coal age bears a picture of 
the then existing gigantic forests and inky seas, 
and is yet somewhere passing the remote coastlines 
of unknown systems, and could some swifter mes- 
senger overtake it, he would have a view of the 
world as it was when that ray was reflected from 
the carboniferous period. The messenger is not 
needed to overtake the fugitive ray, for the light 
thus reflected, struck against rock and tree, and 
photographed the images of every moment since the 
stars first sang together. Every atom still vibrates 
to the molding hand of life under which it has at 
some time passed, and the sensitive mind is able to 
catch these vibrations and interpret their meaning 
in forms of thought. The discovery of this wonder- 
ful faculty of the mind is not of recent date. 

Almost fifty years ago an Episcopal Bishop re- 
marked to Dr. Buchanan that when he touched 
brass, even in the night, when he could not know 
with what substance he came in contact, he at once 
felt a disagreeable influence and recognized an 
offensive metallic taste. Such experience had been 
common to a great number of persons, and fre- 
quently observed, but this time it was called to the 
attention of the right man. All the world for ages 
had seen bodies fall to the ground, and countless 
millions of eyes have seen the phenomenon with no 
more thought than the brute, until a falling apple 
drew the attention of Newton. Dr, Buchanan at 
once saw that there was a profound philosophy 
back of this fact which transcended the senses. He 



66 SENSITIVENESS PROVED BY PSYCHOMETRY. 

began a lengthy series of experiments, by which he 
discovered that it was by no means rare for persons 
to be affected by metallic and other substances. In 
a class of one hundred and thirty students at the 
Eclectic Medical College, forty-three were sensitive 
in greater or less degree. Medicines held in the 
hand without any knowledge of their properties, 
produced the same effect, varying only in degree as 
when taken into the stomach. By placing the hand, 
or merely coming into the atmosphere of a deceased 
person, the sensitive was able to locate and describe 
the disease. In this field Dr. Buchanan has stood 
almost alone, until recently M. Bourru and M. Burot 
of the Naval Medical School at Rochfort, have made 
extended experiments on the "action of medicines 
at a distance," which is really another way of stat- 
ing the facts observed by him a generation ago. 
They held the metals and drugs six inches or so 
from the back of the head of the patients and 
proved all that Dr. Buchanan claimed for his dis- 
covery. 

But the discoverer did not rest here ; he went a 
step further and found that a letter or any article 
having been brought in contact with the person, 
when taken in the hand or placed on the forehead of 
. one sufficiently sensitive, gave the character of its 
writer or owner. Repeated experiments, such as 
any one may make, prove beyond question that the 
sensitive can in this manner read the character of 
the writer from his writings, his state of health, 
better than the most intimate friend, or even the 
writer himself. It is a marvelous statement, but 
only marvelous in our not understanding its cause. 
When this is revealed, and mystery removed, the 
subject allies itself with other phenomena of mind, 
having their origin in impressibility. 



PSYCHOMETRY BY PROF. DENTON. 67 

Prof. Denton carried the results of psychometry 
far beyond the boundaries reached by Dr. Buchanan. 
If the world is one vast picture gallery of every act 
and thought since the beginning of time, the fossil 
shell, the rock-fragment, the broken arrow head, 
the shred of mummy, and the rush leaf from the 
banks of the Nile should reproduce in the sensitive 
the story of their origm and age. By a great num- 
ber of experiments, the details of which fill three 
volumes, Prof. Denton sought to establish this gen- 
eralization and write the geological and pre-historic 
history of the earth. That he« found a kernel of 
truth can not be denied, but he allowed sources of 
error to creep in and vitiate his wonderfully sug- 
gestive and patient research. A person sensitive to 
the degree that enables him to feel the influences 
given to a fragment of stone thousands of years 
ago, would be more strongly impressed with the in- 
fluence imparted by the one who secured it, and 
held it in his hands before the experiment. It is 
from this cause that uncertainty rests on his other- 
wise well-planned experiments. Yet he has proved 
that such sensitiveness exists, and that by it the 
story of history from fragments of ruined archi- 
tecture may be read, and scenes in geological ages 
by fossil, bone or shell be described. 

How ? Really pschometry, depending on the sen- 
sitiveness of the brain, is a lower degree of clairvoy- 
ance, and is merged, in its clearest forms, therein. 
Sensitiveness means the capability of receiving the 
psycho-ether waves as they pulsate from some cen- 
ter, and as everything touched by life is in a state 
of such vibration, the recognition is only a question 
of the delicacy of the receiving organization. 

There is a vast accumulation of narratives of 
ghosts, witches, apparitions, hallucinations, illu- 



68 SENSITIVENESS PROVED JBY PSYCHOMETRY. 

sions, dreams, etc., which it is the present fashion 
to relegate to the sphere of superstition and ignor- 
ance. Many of these, however anomalous, have a 
foundation in fact, and will be found, when stripped 
of the portions superstition has added, readily ex- 
plainable, either as subjective, arising from impres- 
sions on the sensitive, or as objective and manifest- 
ed by the same principles. As sensitiveness to 
these subtile influences greatly varies in different 
individuals and at different times in the same 
individual, and at times becomes clairvoyance, 
scarcely an illustration can be given of one without 
introducing the other. We must constantly bear in 
mind that there is one fundamental cause back of 
all these so-called occult phenomena, varying in 
the degree of its manifestation in accord with the 
channel through which it flows. 

Subjective Spectral Illusions. — Dr. Abercombie 
is authority for the following illustration of subject- 
ive spectral illusions : "A gentleman of high mental 
endowments, and now upwards of eighty years of 
age, of spare habits and enjoying uninterrupted 
health, has been for eleven years subject to the 
daily visits of spectral figures. They in general pre- 
sent human countenances; the head and body are 
distinctly defined, the lower parts are for the most 
part, lost in a kind of cloud. The figures are vari- 
ous, but he recognizes the same countenances re- 
peated from time to time, especially of late years, 
that of an elderly woman, with a peculiarly arch 
and playful expression, and a dazzling brilliancy of 
eye, who seems just ready to speak with him. . . . 
This female is dressed in an old-fashioned Scottish 
plaid of Tartan, drawn up and brought forward over 
the head, and then crossed below the chin, as the 



SUBJECTIVE SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS. 69 

plaid was worn by aged women in his younger days. 
He can seldom recognize among the spectres any 
figure or countenance which he remembers to have 
seen ; but his own face has been presented to him, 
gradually undergoing the change from youth to 
manhood, and from manhood to old age." 

It is not necessary to call in the aid of an invisible 
being to explain such appearances. The house had 
been occupied by Scotch who dressed as described, 
and the influence they left impressed itself on the 
gentleman's sensitive brain. 

" All houses where men have lived and died are 
haunted houses," not by actual ghosts, but by the 
subtile force which persons impart to everything 
with which they come in contact. That he was 
subject to some influence outside of himself is shown 
by the appearances always being of some one that 
he had never seen, and hence they could not have 
been revived pictures from his own brain. After 
he had been in the house for a long time he began 
to see his own face ; that is, after he had imparted 
his own influence to his surroundings, he received 
them back as from a mirror. 

Dendy, in his " Philosophy of Mystery," mentions 
"M. Audral, who in his youth saw, in La Pitie, the 
putrid body of a child covered with larvae, and 
during the next morning the spectre of this corpse 
lying on his table was as perfect as reality." He 
could not see it by a mental effort, nor any where 
else than on his table, and whenever he looked at 
that, the appearance at once came. It may be said 
in explanation, that the sight of the disgusting 
object produced a strong impression on the optic 
nerves and mind, and a suggestive object, as the 
table reproduced the same state. We have no evi- 
dence that one object, under the same light, affects 



70 SENSITIVENESS PROVED BY PSYCHOMETRY. 

the optic nerves more than any other would under 
the same circumstances. Vivid mental impressions 
are more readily reproduced than those that scarcely 
ruffle the surface of thought; but this does not ac- 
count for the student not seeing the appearance at 
any other time or place than on the table where 
it had laid, and which we would say retained the 
influence imparted to it by the body having lain 
there. 

Professor Hitchcock says that during a severe 
sickness, "day after day visions of strange land- 
scapes spread out before him — mountain, lake and 
forest ; vast rocks, strata upon strata piled to the 
clouds ; the panorama of a world shattered and 
upheaved, disclosing the grim secrets of creation, 
the unshapely and monstrous rudiments of organic 
being." His son, Professor Charles Hitchcock, adds 
that his father saw the sandstone beds of the Con- 
necticut valley spread out before him, covered with 
tracks, and by the superior insight wrought by sick- 
ness, cleared up some doubtful points to which he 
had vainly given his attention. Professor Hitch- 
cock became, in consequence of his sickness, ex- 
ceedingly sensitive, and the geological specimens 
near him, or that he had handled, brought up in his 
mind the pictures of their primeval age. 

Hallucinations. — The received definition of an 
hallucination is a false perception without any 
material basis, being formed entirely in the mind. 
An individual who sees pictures on a blank wall, 
or who hears voices when no sound reaches his 
ear, is hallucinated. "The reason for this being 
that the erroneous perception constituting the hal- 
lucination is found in that part of the brain which 
ordinarily requires the excitation of sensorial im- 



HALLUCINATIONS. 71 

pressions for its functions/' In this view, halluci- 
nation is evidence of mental derangement and in- 
cipient insanity. This explanation is by no means 
sufficient for this class of facts. That a certain 
tract of brain can of itself give the mind compli-, 
cated representations, never before seen or imaged 
in the mind, is not established. The reappearance 
of objects that have been seen is better explained, 
and still more satisfactorily, by causes which unite 
them all together, and with all like phenomena. 
George Combe says of a painter who inherited much 
of the patronage of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and be- 
lieved himself to possess a talent superior to his, was 
so fully engaged that he had painted three hundred 
large and small portraits in one } r ear. The fact 
appeared physically impossible, but the secret of his 
rapidity and astonishing success was this : He re- 
quired but one sitting of his model. His method 
was as follows, as given by himself : "When a sit- 
ter came, I looked attentively on him for half an 
hour, sketching from time to time on the canvas. 
I did not require a longer sitting. I removed the 
canvas, and passed to another person. When I 
wished to continue the first portrait, I recalled the 
man to my mind. I placed him on the chair, where 
I perceived him as distinctly as though really there, 
and, I may add, in form and color more decidedly 
brilliant. I looked from time to time at the imagin- 
ary figure and went on painting, occasionally stop- 
ping to examine the picture exactly as though the 
original was before me ; whenever I looked towards 
the chair I saw the man. This method made me 
very popular, and as I always caught the resem- 
blance, the sitters were delighted that I spared 
them the annoying sittings of other painters." 
This painter was far from insipient insanity. He 



72 SENSITIVENESS PROVED BY PSYCHOMETRY. 

was sensitive to impressions, and able by that or- 
ganization to recall the image of the sitter, but not 
that of one who had not occupied the chair. 

The Rev. T. L. Williams, Vicar of Perthleven, 
in " The Journal of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search, July, 1885, gives his personal experience : 
"On an occasion when I was absent from home, 
my wife awoke one morning, and to her surprise 
and alarm saw me standing by the bedside looking 
at her. In her fright she covered her face with the 
bed clothes, and when she ventured to look again 
the appearance was gone. On another occasion, 
when I was not absent from home, my wife saw 
me, as she supposed, coming from church in sur- 
plice and stole. I came a little way, she says, and 
turned round the corner of the building, where she 
lost sight of me. I was at the time in the church 
in my place in the choir, where she was much sur- 
prised to see me on entering the building 

My daughter has often told me, and now repeats 
the story, that she was passing my study door, 
which was ajar, and looked in to see if I was there. 
She saw me in my chair, and as she caught sight 
of me, I stretched out my arms, and drew my hands 
across my eyes, a familiar gesture of mine. I was 
in the village at the time. Now, nothing occurred 
at or about the times of these appearances to give 
any meaning to them." He adds: "A good many 
years ago there was a devout young woman living 
in my parish, who used to spend much of her spare 
time in church in meditation and prayer. She used 
to assert that she frequently saw me standing at 
the altar when I certainly was not there in the 
body." Mr. Williams must have been a man pecu- 
liarly endowed with psychic force to thus impress 
himself. 



HALLUCINATIONS. 73 

The following is from the pen of the gifted Mary 
Howitt, and not only gives a remarkable fact, but 
her explanation of "the same: "I conducted Mrs. 
Nenner through a room which contained some 
ancient furniture and a quantity of valuable old 
china. This china had been left in our care by a 
friend during his lengthened absence abroad. His 
thoughts from his place of sojourn at the antipodes 
constantly reverted to these heirlooms. 

" 'Who are these six gentlemen, evidently broth- 
ers, sitting where the old china is?' asked Mrs. 
Nenner, when we had passed through the room. 

"' There was no one there at all,' I said, much 
surprised. 

" 'Then,' said she, 'I must have seen six brother 
spirits . There they were sitting ; tall, fair men, 
light haired, all strikingly alike, all the same age. 
They must be brothers !' 

" I recognized in her description the owner of the 
china. Before Mrs. Nenner left, we showed her a 
portrait of the owner of the china, our friend on 
the other side of the world. She at once said, ' Oh, 
that is one of the six brothers ! ' In some mysteri- 
ous manner the intensity of thought fixed by the 
possessor of the china upon his possessions — we 
knew that his thoughts constantly reverted to them — 
had been able to manifest itself to the sight in the 
form of the man himself, but multiplied into six 
forms. It should be observed that this gentleman 
was of what now we should term a 'mediumistic' 
temperament. It is possible, that being at the an- 
tipodes, he might be, at the time his multiplied form 
was beheld, asleep — it being night there when it is 
day with us — and that his thoughts might have, in a 
dream, revisited England." 

Since civilization began, mankind have held certain 



74 SENSITIVENESS PROVED BY PSYCHOMETRY. 

stones and metals as precious, and attributed rare 
qualities to charms, relics and amulets. We may 
indulge our mirth over the miraculous qualities 
ascribed to the bones of martyrs and the teeth of 
saints, a bit of wood from the true cross; but casting 
aside the rubbish gathered by imposture and credu- 
lity, we discover a great truth. Precious stones and 
metals have become so because of the subtile power 
of their emanations. In a true relic the sensitive 
perceives the full expression of the original owner's 
life, and feels it reproduced in him. As the phono- 
graph treasures up the tone, the accent, the quality 
of the voice, and the thought of the speaker, so the 
relic preserves and constantly gives forth the char- 
acter of the one it represents. 

Shrines and holy places have cause for being 
regarded as sacred, and their preservation in purity 
for the one and only purpose is correct in science. 
The church devoted to the worship of Jehovah holds 
its devotees with the invisible bonds reaching out 
from the walls forged from the psycho-aura of all 
preceding worshippers. That the members hold their 
houses exclusively for certain uses may be the result 
of superstition, but they are right in thus doing. A 
church building given over during the week to shows 
and entertainments, and nightly filled with the class 
such would draw, would become so saturated with 
worldly influences as to be unfit for the promul- 
gation of the highest religious thought on Sunday. 
Both audience and minister would feel the depres- 
sing effect, and religious zeal would reach zero. 

How strong and enduring the impress stamped on 
a relic or jewel may be, is shown in the following story 
told of Robert Browning by Mr. Knowles (Spectator, 
Jan. 30, 1869): "Mr. Robert Browning tells me that' 
when he was in Florence some years since, an Italian 



SENSITIVENESS DURING SLEEP. 75 

nobleman (Count Guinasi) was brought to his house. 
The Count professed to have great mesmeric powers, 
and declared in reply to Mr. Browning's avowed skep- 
ticism, he would convince him of his powers. He 
then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything 
about him then and there, which he could hand him, 
and which was in anyway a memento or relic. It so 
happened by curious accident, that Mr. Browning 
was wearing under his coat sleeves some gold wrist 
studs to his shirt, which he had quite recently taken 
into wear in absence of his ordinary wrist-buttons. 
He had never before worn them in Florence, or else- 
where, and found them in an old drawer where they 
had lain forgotten for years. One of these he took 
out and handed to the Count, who held it in his hand 
awhile and then said as if much impressed, ' There 
is something here which cries out in my ear, Murder ! 
murder ! ' 

"And truly," said Mr. Browning, "these studs 
were taken from the dead body of a great uncle of 
mine, who was violently killed on his estate in St. 
Kitts nearly eighty years ago. They were produced 
in court as proofs that robbery had not been the ob- 
ject of the st rangier, which was effected by his own 
slaves. They were taken out of the night-gown in 
which he died and given to me." 



Sensitiveness During Sleep. 



The Index published the following : 

"Recently the youngest child of Warren Wasson 
(Katie) fell into a well and was nearly drowned. A 
day or two since, a letter was received from Mr. 



76 . SENSITIVENESS BUBING SLEEP. 

Wasson, who is in Oregon, written before he had 
heard of the occurrence. He stated that on the 
same Sunday, at the time of the accident, he was 
taking a nap, and was awakened by a terrifying 
dream. He thought he saw little Katie dripping 
with water, and the little boy next older than Katie 
was immersed in the water, and that he was able to 
save him only by taking hold of his ears. When he 
pulled him out, he was covered with spots like a 
leopard. Mr. Wasson says that as he awoke he was 
covered with cold sweat, and in an agony of mind. 
This is a very strange coincidence, and the dream 
corresponds with the occurrence, save that the little 
boy was not in danger. It was the little girl who 
was spotted from the chill." 

It resembles a wrongly received telegraphic dis- 
patch, in which one word is substituted for an- 
other. 

Effect of Strong Mental Impression. — A strong 
mental impression carried into sleep is conducive to 
impressibility. Inspector Jewett, of the Brooklyn 
Police, was so worried about the lost pistol of John 
Kenny, who had shot a car-driver, as he wanted the 
weapon in evidence against the ruffian, that he 
dreamed about it. He saw it in a certain saloon, in 
a certain place, and the next morning went to the 
saloon and found the pistol exactly where he saw it 
in his dream. 

The rescue of the crew of the " Sparkenhoe," No- 
vember 30, 1875, by Capt. Adam S. Smalley, as told by 
him, is a fine illustration of impressibility in sleep. 
He sailed from Bordeaux November 24, 1875, in the 
brigantine "Fred Eugene," bound for Key West, 
and soon encountered stormy weather. When six 
hundred miles at sea, on the night of the 29th, he 



EFFECT OF STRONG MENTAL IMPRESSION. 77 

suddenly awoke from sleep, deeply impressed with 
a dream, in which he had seen a number of men in 
great peril. He related this to his wife, adding that 
he hoped no shipwrecked crew needed his assist- 
ance. At midnight, he again retired, and again the 
vision was repeated with more distinctness, and the 
men appearing on a wreck needing the utmost dis- 
patch to rescue them. The Captain went immedi- 
ately on deck, and without any assigned reason, 
changed the course of the ship two points, and, giv- 
ing orders to be called at daylight, retired, and slept 
till the appointed time. 

Going on deck at dawn, and sweeping the horizon 
with his glass, he discovered a ship far to the wind- 
ward, with a signal of distress displayed. He en- 
deavored to work his vessel up, but with short sail 
and heavy sea, most of the forenoon passed, and a 
long distance remained. He was resolved to take a 
long tack, and not change his course until prompted 
to do so by the same impulse that bade him do so the 
night before. More sail was made, although pru- 
dence forbade, in the face of a gale at any moment 
threatening to break, and all the men stood at their 
posts for over an hour, awaiting the orders for tack- 
ing. 

At last the prompting came, and going about, the 
vessel reached a point two miles to the leeward of 
the distressed ship, where her three boats, contain- 
ing twenty-three men in all, had put off to intercept 
the brig. They were taken on board, the boats cut 
loose, and all sail taken in as quickly as possible, 
and in ten minutes a fierce hurricane lashed the sea 
to foam. The gale raged four days with unabated 
fury, so that, had they not been rescued at the very 
moment they were, they would have certainly per- 
ished. 



78 SENSITIVENESS DURING SLEEP. 

We have two explanations. The first is that of 
thought transference — the reception on the sensitive 
brain of Captain Smalley of the intense thoughts of 
the perishing crew. As the inductive plate sends its 
influence across miles of space, we may suppose that 
the vibrations from them would go out across the 
wide sea interval, and, finding a receiving instru- 
ment, be converted again to thought. The second 
explanation is that of the interference of spiritual 
beings, who impress, their thoughts on the mind of 
the Captain in the same manner. The prompting 
as to the course to steer is beyond and outside of the 
dream, and proves the extreme sensitiveness of the 
commander. 

A Bream Saves a Shipwrecked Crew. — Of pre- 
cisely similar character is the impression received 
by Capt. G. A. Johnson of the schooner "Augusta 
H. Johnson." He sailed from Quero for home, en- 
countering a terrible hurricane. On the second day, 
he saw a disabled brig, and near by a barque. He 
was anxious to reach home, and thinking the barque 
would assist the brig, continued on. 

But the impression came that he must turn back 
and board the brig. He could not shake it off, and 
at last he, with four men, boarded the brig in the 
dory. He found her deserted, and made sail on her. 
After a time they saw an object ahead, appearing 
like a man on a cake of ice. The dory was again 
manned, and sent to the rescue. It proved to be the 
mate of the bark "Leawood," clinging to the bottom 
of an overturned boat, which, being white, appeared 
in the distance as ice. This premonition came with- 
out seeking, and in direct opposition to the desire 
of Captain Johnson, desiring to escape from the 
storm, and reach home without delay. 



A LIFE SAVED. 79 

A Life Saved. — The Biddleford (Me.) Journal thus 
relates the story of the narrow escape of a sailor : 

' 'Last week the schooner "Ida May" lay at Gov- 
ernment Wharf, near the mouth of Kinnebunk 
River, with one man on board, Freeman Grove, 
who was in the cabin asleep. In the night he was 
awakened by some one touching" him and saying, 
'You will be drowned.' On opening his eyes, no 
one was present, but he immediately went on deck, 
and found the side of the vessel caught under the 
wharf by the tide, and shortly it would have sunk, 
and cabin and all been under water. With a plank 
he pried the side from the wharf, and she came up 
with the tide. The sleeper, being in the cabin, must 
have been drowned had he not been awakened by 
the voice." 

Perhaps no greater disaster was ever accom- 
panied by a greater number of special premonitions 
and warnings of coming danger than the "Ash- 
tabula horror," where a train crowded with passen- 
gers plunged into a gulf in a fearful storm, and, tak- 
ing fire, was burned. The Times published a list of 
the names of those saved by "presentiments." One, 
in particular, is related at length, and is thoroughly 
vouched for. A young lady, by the name of Hazen, 
having with her a colored servant, started from Bal- 
timore for Pittsburg, where she was to be married. 
She had purchased tickets at Buffalo for the ill-fated 
train. During the night previous, "Aunt Chloe," 
the colored slave, had a dream, which so impressed 
her that when they reached the depot she positively 
refused to go on that train. "Auntie" had been as 
a mother to Miss Hazen, who lost her mother in in- 
fancy. The young lady, perhaps somewhat a be- 
liever in the superstitions of the slaves, humored 
Auntie's mood, and deferred going until the next 



80 SENSITIVENESS DURIITG SLEEP. 

train — in all probability thereby saving the lives of 
both. 

Clairvoyant Dream-State.— The Oakland (Cal.) 
Tribune records a pleasing story, vdiich fully illus- 
trates what may be called a permanent dream-sen- 
sitiveness identical with clairvoyance: "Twenty 
years ago. a bachelor in Oakland dreamed of visiting 
a family consisting of parents and two little girls, 
who were unknown to him in his waking hours. 
From that time forth, he continued to dream of 
them for a score of years. He saw the children 
grow from childhood to womanhood. He was 
at the closing exercises when they graduated. In 
fact, he shared all the pleasures and griefs of the 
family. His friendship to his dreamland friends 
seemed so real, he often remarked that he felt cer- 
tain he would know them in reality at some future 
time. 

" Two months ago, in a dream, he saw the husband 
die, and from that time he ceased to dream of them in 
a period of twenty years. He received a letter from 
iNew York City, the writer being the widow of a 
cousin of his, with whom he had had no intercourse 
since his boyhood — over thirty years. She wrote 
that she wished to make San Francisco her future 
home, and it was arranged for him to meet her and 
her two daughters at the wharf at Oakland. On 
their arrival, imagine his surprise to see his dream 
friends. They were equally so when he related to 
them the dreams in which they had figured. He 
told them incidents connected with their past lives 
which he could not have known under ordinary 
circumstances. He described their former home, 
even to the furniture and household ornaments, and 
was correct in every particular. The sequel is that 



ALLEGORICAL BREAMS. 81 

he married the lady, and they are living happily in 
this city." 

Allegorical Dreams. — When important intelli- 
gence comes in allegorical form, it is difficult to 
give adequate explanation, without calling to our 
aid an outside intelligence. The London News has 
the following : 

"Most people remember the terrible railway acci- 
dent, in which Dickens himself and Ms proof-sheets 
escaped, while so many perished. In the train there 
chanced to be a gentleman and lady just returned 
from India. The lady said to her husband, ' I see 
the great wave rolling on ; it is close to us,' and then 
the crash came, and she was a corpse. The husband 
was unhurt, and at a later time explained his wife's 
strange words. Ever since they had set sail from 
India, she had been haunted in sleep by a dream of 
a vast silvery wave, and always, just as it was about 
to break on her, she had awakened in terror." 

Less tragic, but quite odd enough for Mr. Proc- 
tor's collection, is the anecdote of the south-country 
farmer's dream. The good man awakened from his 
first sleep, and aroused his wife to tell her about a 
startling vision. He had dreamed that he saw a 
favorite cow drowning in a pond in a neighboring 
common. "There ain't no pond there;" said the 
wife, with natural irritation and double-shotted neg- 
atives. This was undeniably true, but the farmer 
was uneasy. At last he arose, dressed, and walked 
up the long lane which led to the common. Every- 
thing was quiet, but just at the top of the lane the 
farmer heard a sound as of a man digging. Then 
a light caught his eye. It glimmered through a 
hedge that divided the lane from the fields. The 
farmer cautiously drew near, till he was just above 



82 • SENSITIVENESS DURING SLEEP. 

the ditch There he spied a country fellow, with a 
lantern, digging a long, straight, deep hole in the 
ground. An ax lay beside the hole. At this point 
the farmer slipped, the hedge rustled, and the delver 
fled away. The farmer secured the lantern and 
made for home. Just at the entrance of the lane, 
the time being about two in the morning, he met 
one of his servant wenches hurrying in the direction 
whence he had come. "What do you want, my 
lass ? No good, I fear," said the agricultural moral- 
ist; and, in short, he made the girl tell him her 
story. She was going to an assignation with her 
"young man," who had jilted her, and was courting 
another girl. She had threatened him with an 
action for breach of promise of marriage, and the 
swain had promised that, if she would but meet 
him at two in the morning, at the bend of the lane, 
he would satisfy her, and remove all jealousy and 
differences. 

"Very well, my lass," said the farmer, "come, 
and I'll show you what he had to give you." He 
led the way, and revealed to the horrified girl the 
long, deep, narrow hole and sharp ax which had 
awaited her. Naturally, she did not any longer 
pursue her lover; and here is a dream which even 
Mr. Proctor will admit not to have been purposeless. 
Indeed, the "machinery" of the drowning cow 
made the vision appeal directly to the bucolic mind. 

Of the same prophetic character is the following 
well-authenticated dream : 

Mrs. Jacob Condon, living a few miles from Reed, 
Pa., dreamed a few nights ago that her year-old 
baby was burned to death, and that she sent word 
of the casualty to her husband, who was working 
at a distance from home, by James Portlewaith, a 
neighbor. The next "morning she told her husband 



MRS. BO WITT'S EXPERIENCE. 83 

of her dream, and admitted that it made her 
despondent. He laughed at her fears, and went 
away to his work. Late in the forenoon, Mrs. Con- 
don left her kitchen to go to the wood-shed, a few 
steps away. While she was there she heard her baby 
screaming. She ran into the house and found the 
child lying in front of an open grate, wrapped in 
flames. See threw an old coat about the child, and 
smothered the flames, but it was so badly burned that 
it died in a few minutes. Mrs. Condon went to the 
door to call for assistance. As she reached the door, 
James Portlewaith was passing the gate. She sent 
him to her husband with the dreadful news, thus ful- 
filling her terrible dream to the letter. 

Mrs. Howitt, whose veracity no one can dispute, 
gives the following experience in the Psychological 
Review, London, which may be taken as an illus- 
tration of thought transference, or as the interpo- 
sition of a supreme intelligence : 

" I dreamed that I received a letter from my eldest 
son. In my dream I eagerly broke open the seal, 
and saw a closely- written sheet of paper, but my eye 
caught only these words in the middle of the first 
page, written larger than the rest and underlined, 
' My father is very UV The utmost distress seized 
me, and I suddenly awoke, to find it only a dream ; 
yet the painful impression of reality was so vivid, 
that it was long before I could compose myself. 
The first thing I did the following morning was to 
commence a letter to my husband, relating this 
distressing dream. Six days afterwards, on the 
18th, an Australian mail came in and brought me 
a letter, the only letter I received by that mail, and 
not from any of my own family, but from a gentle- 
man in Australia with whom we were acquainted. 
This letter was addressed on the outside, " Imme- 



84 SENSITIVENESS DURING SLEEP. 

diate," and with a trembling hand I opened it ; and 
true enough, the first words I saw — and these writ- 
ten larger than the rest, in the middle of the paper, 
and underlined, were : ' Mr. Howitt is very ill.' The 
context of these terrible words was, however, ' If 
you hear that Mr. Howitt is very ill, let this assure 
you that he is better ; ' but the only emphatic words 
which I saw in my dream, and these, nevertheless, 
slightly varying, ,as, from some cause or other, all 
such mental impressions, spirit revelations, or occult, 
dark sayings generally do vary from the truth or 
type which they seem to reflect." 

Stainton Moses, M. D., who has given life-long 
attention to psychic research, remarks on the appar- 
ent discrepancy between the words of the dream, 
and the letter as follows : 

" It may be permitted to the writer to suggest, that 
through a fuller acquaintance with, and deeper ob- 
servation of, the phenomena of 'spirit revelation, 
occult, dark sayings ', etc., the truth has forced it- 
self upon various philosophic minds, that in obedi- 
ence to a primal law of spirit's intercourse with 
spirit — it is always the essence or spirit of an idea or 
fact which is sought to be conveyed to the mind, and 
not the mere literal clothing of that idea or fact. 
This essence or spirit of the idea is the grain of 
true wheat alone needed ; the form is simply the husk 
that clothes it for a temporary purpose, and must of 
necessity fall away from it as a dead thing. * In this 
material, matter-of-fact age, literal truth, 5 says the" 
Rev. James Smith, 'the lowest of all truths in one 
sense, is generally regarded as the highest. But 
they are superficial thinkers who dabble only in liter- 
al truth or physical truth.' This is a knowledge of 
Law Spiritual, without which progress is impossible 
for the student of psychology." 



THE IDEA, NOT WORDS, CONVEYED. 85 

The Idea, not Words, Conveyed.— If the idea was 
sent through the psychic-ether, as a wave of thought, 
it would translate itself into language, and the 
language of the receiving mind would be the one 
into which it would be translated. It would pass 
through space as the essence of thought, and the 
sensitive recipient would clothe it with the garments 
of words. 

Wm. Howitt; on his visit to Australia, had a dream 
which he regarded as having great importance as a 
fact in Mental Science. He says : 

" Some weeks ago, while yet at sea, I had a dream 
of being at my brother's at Melbourne, and found his 
house on a hill at the further end of the town, next to 
the open forest. The garden sloped a little way down 
the hill to some brick buildings below ; and there 
were greenhouses on the right hand by the wall as 
you looked down the hill from the house. As I 
looked out the windows in my dream, I saw a wood 
of dusky-foiiaged trees, having a segregated appear- 
ance in their heads ; that is, their heads did not make 
that dense mass like our woods. 'There!' said I, 
addressing some one in my dream, ' I see your native 
forest of Eucalyptus ! ' This dream I told to my sons, 
and to two of our fellow-passengers, at the time, and 
on landing, as we walked over the meadows, long be- 
fore we reached the town, I saw this very wood. 
' There ! ' I exclaimed, 4s the very wood of my dream. 
We shall see my brother's house there.' And so we 
did. It stood exactly as I saw it, only looking newer; 
but there, over the wall of the garden, is the wood 
exactly as I saw it and now see it, as I sit at the din- 
ing-room window writing. When I look upon this 
scene I seem to look into my dream/' 

This mysterious perception of scenes and events 
which, after perhaps years, come before the dreamer 



80 . DREAMS. 

or enter into his life, is supported by ample testimony. 

In the Spiritual Magazine, is; i, the author, speak- 
ing of this dream, gives further curious details : 

".hi a, vision at son., somo thousand niilos from Mel- 
bourne, I Dot only clearly saw my brother's homo and 
tho landscape around it, but also saw things in direct 
opposition to news received before leaving England. 
It was said that all the men were gone to the gold- 
fields, and that even the Governor arid Chief- Justice 

had no men-scrvants Left. But I now saw abundance 
of men in the streets of Melbourne, and many sitting 
on doorsteps asking employment. . . . When in 
the street before my brother's house, we saw swarms 
of men, and some actually sitting on steps, seeking 
work. All was so exactly as 1 bad described, that 
great was the astonishment of my companions. " 

If we were to regard sleep, after the common usage, 
as a simple state, dreams, visions, thought transfer- 
ence, and the appearance of a person while living at 
a distance, become a, mass of irreconcilable details. 
But this is a wholly erroneous view of the character 
o\' sleep. It is one of the most complex and change- 
ful conditions, ranging from the disturbed doze of the 
overweary, to the most sensitive clairvoyance. It 
will be seen that many of the SO-called dreams are 
really visions received in a more sensitive condition 
than is furnished during the waking hours. 



Dreams. 



Sensitiveness During- Sleep.— There are dreams 
and dreams. When greatly fatigued, mentally or 
physically, the partially awakened faculties often 



SENSITIVENESS DURING SLEEP. 87 

become impressed with strangely distorted thoughts. 
Then there are the terrible dreams from indigestion, 
the peculiar interpretations of bodily discomfort, as 
dreams of frosts and snows, when chilled during 
sleep, or of burning forests when over-heated. 
Galen gives examples of such dreams in the case of 
a man who dreamed that his right leg was turned to 
stone, and soon after lost the use of it by palsy; and 
another patient who dreamed that he was in a vessel 
filled with blood, which the physician accepted as a 
sign that the man ought to be bled, by which a serious 
disease under which he labored was cured. 

In perfect sleep dreams do not occur, because all 
the mental faculties are dormant. The conjecture 
that the mind always dreams, but fails to remember, 
is not true. A hearty supper, by inducing indiges- 
tion, is a prolific cause of bad dreams. 

Derangement of the perfect corollation of the men- 
tal faculties, in sickness or the weakness of age, is a 
frequent cause of the wildest and most incoherent 
visions. All these causes may be well considered, 
and after their influences have been eliminated, 
there remains an order distinct and inexplicable by 
known causes. The dreamer may not be sensitive 
to psychic influences while awake, but during sleep 
may become exceedingly so. Night favors sensitive- 
ness because of its negative influence. All nervous 
diseases are aggravated by the coming of twilight, 
and midnight is the hour when the most perfect nega- 
tiveness is reached, as high noon is that of extreme 
positiveness. 

It would be an easy task to fill volumes with 
dreams that have been received as premonitions of 
future events, or forecasts of desired information, 
which was otherwise impossible to obtain. I do not 
desire to crowd these pages with any more than will 



88 BREAMS. 

serve to illustrate the various characters of the true 
psychic dream, and show how the extra sensitive- 
ness acquired in sleep explains this subject. It is 
misleading, however, to employ the word sleep in 
this connection, for in sound sleep there is dreamless 
rest. Sleep is the repose of the faculties, and im- 
pressions are not recognized. The peculiar condi- 
tion in which these dreams occur, is mistaken for 
sleep, but is nearer trance. The silence of the 
night and its soothing negative quality, enhances 
this state, and impressions are borne into the re- 
ceptive mind on the psycho-ether. Dreams that 
reach into the future and foretell events concealed 
from human ken, and which no reasoning or fore- 
thought can predict, are of interest as revealing 
glimpses of a new field of thought — that of pro- 
phecy. 

In the "Glimpses of the Supernatural," is a dream 
related by a dignitary of the Church of England : 

"My brother had left London for the country to 
preach for a certain society to which he was offici- 
ally attached. He was in usual health, and 1 there- 
fore had no cause to feel anxiety about him. One 
night my wife awoke me, finding that I was sobbing 
in my sleep, and asked me the cause. I said, 'I 
have been to a small village, and I went up to the 
door of the inn. A stout woman came to the door. 
I said to her: ' Is my brother here?' She said, 
'No, sir: he is gone.' 'Is his wife here?' I in- 
quired. 'No, sir; but his widow is.' Then the dis- 
tressing thought came to me that my brother was 
dead. A few days after, I was suddenly summoned 
into the country. My brother had been attacked by 
a fatal illness, at Caxton. The following day his 
wife was summoned, and the next day, while they 
were seated together, she heard a sigh and he was 



BEAN STANLEY'S STORY. 89 

gone. When I reached Caxton, it was the very vil- 
lage I had visited in my dream. I went to the same 
house, was let in by the same woman, and found my 
brother dead and his widow there." 

The story told by Dean Stanley has been widely 
circulated. The chiefs of the Campbells, of Inver- 
awe, gave an entertainment. After the party broke 
up, one of the guests returned, claiming protection, 
which Campbell pledged himself to give. It after- 
wards appeared, in a brawl, he had killed Donald, 
the cousin of Campbell, and notwithstanding his 
pledge, he ordered him away. The murderer ap- 
pealed to the word of his host, and was allowed to 
stay for the night, where Campbell slept. The 
blood-stained Donald appeared to him saying: "In- 
verawe, Inverawe, blood has been shed; shield not 
the murderer." Having sent the guilty man aw^ay, 
the last time the vision came, saying: "Inverawe, 
Inverawe, blood has been shed. We shall not meet 
again until we meet at Ticonderoga." 

In 1758, there was a war between France and Eng- 
land, and Campbell, belonging to the Forty- second 
Highlanders, went to America. On the eve of the 
engagement the general said to the officers, who 
knew of what they regarded as Campbell's supersti- 
tion, that it was best not to tell him the name of the 
fortress they were to attack on the morrow, but call 
, it Fort George. The fort was assaulted in the morn- 
ing and Campbell mortally wounded. His last 
words were: "General, you have deceived me. I 
have seen him again. This is Ticonderoga." 

Vouched for as this occurrence is by the highest 
authority, it is of great significance, not only as a 
dream, but it shows that death brought about a sen- 
sitive condition like that in which the dream was 
received, and enabled Donald to again appear. 



90 DREAMS. 

Among the news items of the San Francisco 
Chronicle, appeared the following : 

" Yesterday morning W. S. Read, of Oakland, 
with a companion named Stein, started out from 
Long Wharf to reach a yacht upon which they were 
going on a fishing excursion. When about two hun- 
dred yards from the wharf the boat was capsized 
and Read was drowned. He started to swim to the 
wharf, but when within fifty feet of it he sank and 
did not rise again. Connected with this sad event is^ 
a dream : Last Friday night the sister of the de- 
ceased dreamed that her brother had gone out in a 
boat on Sunday, that the boat had been upset and he 
drowned. So vivid was the impression of the dream, 
that on Saturday morning she went to her brother's 
office, told him of it, and implored him not to go o at, 
but he laughed at her fears as the result of a dis- 
ordered mind." 

Dr. M. L. Holbrook relates the following instances 
of dreams, which are certainly worth recording : 

" Over twenty years ago I was subject to attacks 
of acute bronchitis, which in Spring gave me great 
trouble. On one occasion I was so exceedingly ill 
I felt I should not recover, and in this mood I fell 
to sleep, during which, in a dream, or what appeared 
to be such, my sister, who had died when I was a 
little boy, seemed to come to my bedside and said : 
' Martin, you are not going to die ; you have much 
important work yet to accomplish, and we have 
come to cure you.' Then what I can only describe 
as a shock of heavenly electricity struck me on the 
head, and was intensified over the lungs, where it 
seemed to almost burn through my chest, when it 
passed towards my feet in a delightful glow. The 
shock was so great that I awoke, free from the dis- 
ease, and have never had the trouble since." 



DR. BLACKBURN'S EXPERIENCE. 91 

" In 1867 I was alone in my sleeping-room in New 
York, and dreamed that I was dying, and in my 
struggles awoke. There was nothing peculiar in 
this experience, it may be truthfully said, for this 
sensation is quite common with those who suffer 
with nightmare. The singularity of the case was 
that every night for a succession of nights the same 
thing happened, growing more and more intense, 
Until the last night I thought I could not escape, and 
died. After it was over, the thought came to me, 
' Well, it is not so bad after all ; a rather pleasant 
experience ! ' At this moment my father-in-law, who 
had been dead several months, appeared to me. He 
was the same as when alive, but more spiritual and 
beautiful. He said : ' Martin, I have been endeavor- 
ing to show myself to you for several nights. Now 
I have succeeded, and shall trouble you no more. 
That was the last of my disturbing dreams. My 
thoughts were not upon him. I have never been 
able to convince myself that the vision was not ob- 
jective, though I know some may not look at it in 
the same light. " 

Dr. A. M. Blackburn, of Cresco, Iowa, a well-known 
physician of that town, dreamed that he was called 
to visit a little girl in the neighboring town of Ridge- 
way. On his return he came to a broad river which 
it was impossible to cross. While waiting on the 
banks, an old friend, long since dead, appeared and 
assisted him in crossing. When the doctor arose in 
the morning he related his dream, and so strongly 
was he impressed with its prophetic meaning that 
he secured a policy on his life, talked over and 
arranged his business, and having adjusted all his 
affairs, he awaited the fatality he said was sure 
to overtake him. A day or two after, he was called 
to Ridgeway to visit a little girl, and on his return 



92 DREAMS. 

his horse ran away and he was killed. There is an 
allegorical element in this dream, and the presence 
of a departed friend who assists him over the stream, 
gives it a poetic cast. Yet who can say that it was 
not realized ? 

A dream is related by J. Crysler, of Eepnblic City, 
Kansas, which proved not only true, but the ele- 
ments of "the double," or of the appearance of the 
dreamer in the place he dreamed about, is intro- 
duced. He said, while from home he dreamed that 
his wife was sick, and awoke. On falling asleep 
again, the dream was repeated, a thing that had 
never before occurred to him. He remarked to a 
friend in the morning, that if he believed in dreams 
he would go directly home, as he felt troubled. He, 
however, waited and completed his business, reach- 
ing home the next day, when he found his wife just 
recovering from a severe attack of illness. Their 
three-year-old boy lodged with his mother, and be- 
came restless. All at once he asked: "Ma, what 
man is that standing there?" "Why," she replied, 
"I see no one." "Oh!" said he, "it is pa!" and 
turning over, contentedly dropped to sleep. - The 
thoughts of the father, intensified by his solicitude, 
struck the sensitive brain of his child with such a 
force as to produce the impression that the father 
was an objective reality. 

A prophetic dream must be impressed on the re- 
ceiving mind, from a source having more than hu- 
man intelligence. There must be a mind back of 
the impressions, capable of comprehending cause 
and effect more clearly than mortals are able to do. 
The effect cannot rise above its cause. 

Laugh at the fantacies of a fevered brain, or the 
visions produced by a gorged stomach; the night- 
mare of the gourmand ; the ghost-seeing of the dys- 



SENSITIVENESS INDUCED BY DISEASE. 93 

peptic; but there remain the dreams of the clear 
head and pure heart as angel visitants, and these 
should be treasured. When we rest in the arms of 
sleep, she hushes us with hymns sung by angelic 
voices, and sweet visions of the morning land. 



Sensitiveness Induced by Disease, 



Disease, by weakening the physical powers, is 
often conducive to a wonderful sensitiveness. In 
some cases of fever, the senses are wrought to an 
astonishing acuteness, especially hearing, the patient 
being disturbed by even the ticking of a watch 
in a remote room. The inner perception at other 
times is made equally acute. If the pulsations of 
sound become so magnified and painful, the waves 
of thought in the psycho-ether may become equally 
magnified, and reproduce the thoughts which sent 
them forth to the mind of the recipient. Many of 
the facts given in illustration of other phases of 
sensitiveness apply equally well here. 

"Mademoiselle N was convalescing after a 

very prolonged illness, which had reduced her to a 
state of extreme weakness. All her family had gone 
to church, when a violent storm arose. Mademoiselle 

N went to the window to watch its effects ; the 

thought of her father suddenly struck her, and, under 
existing circumstances, she felt much uneasiness. 
Her imagination soon persuaded her that her father 
had perished. In order to conquer her fears she 
went into a room in which she was accustomed to 



94 /SENSITIVENESS INDUCED BY DISEASE. 

see him in his arm-chair. On entering, she was very- 
much surprised at seeing him in his place, and 
in his accustomed attitude. She immediately ap- 
proached to inquire how he had come in, and in 
addressing him, attempted to place her hand on h.'s 
shoulder, but encountered only space. Very much 
alarmed, she drew back, and turning her head as 
she left the room, still saw him in the same attitude. 
More than half an hour elapsed from the time she first 
saw the apparition. During this time Mademoiselle 
~N — , who was convinced that it was an illusion, 
entered the room several times, and carefully exam- 
ined the arrangement of the objects, and especially 
of the chair." (De Boismont, page 276.) 

IsTothing had occurred to her father, and the ap- 
pearance may be adequately accounted for on psy- 
chometric grounds. The chair was vibrant with the 
influence of the father, and these vibrations con- 
stantly carried out with them his image. 

Mrs. Denton, an extremely sensitive person, re- 
lates an experience which shows how exactly simi- 
lar the impressibility which may be called normal in 
contradistinction to that induced by disease. On 
entering a car from which the passengers had gone 
to dinner, she was surprised to see the seats occupied. 

''Many of them were sitting perfectly composed, 
as if, for them, very little interest was attached to 
this station, while others were already in motion 
(a kind of compressed motion), as if preparing to 
leave. I thought this somewhat strange, and was 
about turning to find a seat in another car, when 
a second glance around showed me that the passen- 
gers, who had appeared so indifferent were really 
losing their identity, and, in a moment, were invis- 
ible to me. I had had time to note the personal 
appearance of several ; and taking a seat I awaited 



BISHOP BOWMAN'S SERMON. 95 

the return of the passengers, thinking it more than 
probable I might in them find the prototypes of the 
faces and forms I had a moment before so singu- 
larly beheld. Nor was I disappointed. A number 
of those who returned to the cars I recognized as 
being, in every particular, the counterparts of their 
late but transient representatives." 
Mary Dana Shindler, in the Voice of Truth, says: 
"An aunt of ours was very ill with fever, and 
her only brother, commanding a packet ship between 
Havana and Charleston, was daily expected; but 
we feared he would arrive too late to see his sister 
in earth-life. One morning while we were watching 
at her bedside, she suddenly sat up, clapped her 
hands, and exclaimed joyfully, ' Brother William 
has come!' We all thought her mind wandering; 
but in about ten minutes he arrived at her house, 
and from that moment she began to recover. She 
could not tell us how she discovered that he had ar- 
rived, but only said, 'I knew it; I heard, and felt 
him.' " 

Bishop Bowman, in a sermon delivered in Phila- 
delphia, narrated a remarkable experience, which 
shows how near the state of death approaches trance 
or clairvoyance. The usual light treatment of the 
fact of the result of cerebral disturbance is far from 
a satisfactory solution: 

" On my return from Japan, I preached in Califor- 
nia, and probably overworked myself. The last Sun- \ 
day in February, after holding divine service in my ' 
St. Louis Church, I returned home, when I was 
immediately taken sick with a lingering fever, which 
the physicians predicted would end fatally. At this 
point I seemed to fall into a kind of ecstasy, and I 
did not know whether I was alive or dead. I imag- 
ined I was on board a magnificent ship, and heard 



96 SENSITIVENESS INDUCED BY DISEASE. 

the captain say, 'Stop her,' which I thought to be the 
voice of my Divine Master, when my young eight- 
een-months-old child, who had died twenty years ago, 
came to me and said that she had heard that I was 
coming, and had come to meet me. After some con- 
versation which I do not recollect, she said, ' Do you 
think I have grown, papa ?' She then arose in a form 
of glory I have never before witnessed, and never 
again expect to see until I die, and then returned to 
her usual state, saying that she came in that shape to 
see if I would know her. She said that many other 
friends had inquired after me, and that an old gen- 
tleman and lady had taken her up and kissed her, say- 
ing that her papa was their boy. I then asked her 
where her mama was. ' Oh, she is away doing some- 
thing for the Lord, but will meet us on our arrival at 
the wharf/ It was a season of great preciousness to 
me. It seems to me that I have come back from the 
other world ; and although it is peculiar for me to 
say I was dead, it seems to me I was not in the 
body." 

The testimony of those who have approached near- 
est to death, and have been brought back to life, 
favors, if not proves, that at that great crisis, as 
the senses fail, spiritual sensitiveness becomes acute, 
and the perceptions merge into a universal con- 
sciousness. A gentleman while swimming failed to 
sustain himself, and before assistance could reach 
him, sank, as he supposed, to rise no more. 

"Then he saw, as if in a wide field, the acts of 
his own being, from the first dawn of memory until 
the time he entered the water. They were all 
grouped and ranged in the order of the succession 
of their happening, and he read the whole volume 
of existence at a glance : nay, its incidents and en- 
tities were photographed on his mind, illumined by 



CLAIRVOYANCE. 97 

light, the panorama of the battle of life lay before 
him." (" Sleep, Memory and Sensation," page 43.) 

Clairvoyance has, as thus appears, a retrospection, 
and is as able to see the past as the present, or pre- 
vise the future. The element of time does not ap- 
pear to enter into the cognition of events by this fac- 
ulty. Everything is in the present, and the past is 
only distinguished by order of sequence. 

A gentleman in Iowa related to me his experience 
while insensible from the effect of cold. He was 
overtaken by a fearful storm, such as sometimes 
sweep across the prairies, and, losing his way after 
hours of vain struggling, sank exhausted in a drift of 
snow. The past events of his life came in a panoramic 
show before him, but so rapidly moving, that from boy- 
hood until that moment was as an instant ; then came 
a sense of perfect physical happiness, and he began 
dimly to see the forms of those whom he had 
known while living, but were now dead. They grew 
more and more distinct, but just as they came near 
and were, as he thought, overjoyed to receive him, 
darkness came suddenly and great pain ; the vision 
faded, and he became conscious of the presence of 
his friends who had rescued him, and were applying 
every measure to restore him to life. How near he 
had reached the boundary line, the " dead line" beyond, 
from which there is no return to the body, was shown 
by his crippled hands and feet. 

It is a singular fact that no one has ever recovered 
from a near approach to this line, who does not tell 
the same tale of an exalted perception and intensifi- 
cation of the mental faculties. Sometimes this is ex- 
hibited by the recognition of an event then trans- 
piring, with which the subject is intimately connect- 
ed, as in the following, wherein the deaths of near 
relatives or friends are discerned : 



98 SENSITIVENESS INDUCED BY DISEASE. 

It is a historical fact that Rev. Joseph ■ Buckminster, 
who died in Vermont, in 1812, just before his death, 
announced that his distinguished son, Rev. J. S. 
Buckminster, was dead. 

The Eaton (0.) Telegraph gives the following 
parallel case : " On Wednesday morning last, at four 
o'clock, Gen. John Quince breathed his last. But a 
few minutes after that, Joseph Deem, who also died 
on the 14th, aroused from his sleep, and said to his 
son John, who attended him, 'Gen. Quince is dead.' 
To this John replied, 'You are mistaken, father, 
Gen. Quince is well, and goes by after his mail every 
day.' 'Yes,' said Father Deem, 'Gen. Quince is 
dead/ Shortly after a neighbor came in, and said 
that Gen. Quince had suddenly died." 

Whenever the power of expression is retained, we 
see the development of clairvoyance at the approach 
of death. Sometimes the paralysis of the muscles 
prevents vocal expression, but where this is the 
case, the eyes show the ecstasy which the lifting of 
the vail from a new world only can give. 

Mrs. Helen Willmans relates this touching story of 
the death of her child : 

"From her birth she had been afraid of death. 
Every fiber of her body and soul recoiled from the 
thought of it. 

" ' Don't let me die ! ' she said. ' Don't let me die ! 
Hold me fast — I can't go. ' 

" 'Jenny,' I said, 'you have two little brothers in 
the other world, and there are thousands of tender- 
hearted people over there, who will love and take 
care of you. 

"'But she cried despairingly, 'Dont let me go. 
They are strangers over there.' 

" But even as she was pleading her little hands re- 
laxed their clinging hold from my waist, and lifted 



THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE, 99 

themselves eagerly aloft ; lifted themselves with 
such a straining effort that they raised the wasted 
body from its reclining position among the pillows. 
Her eyes filled with the light of divine recognition. 
They saw plainly something we could not see. But 
even at that supreme moment she did not forget to 
leave a word of comfort for those who gladly would 
have died in her place. ' Mamma ! mamma ! they 
are not strangers. I am not afraid!' And every 
instant the light burned more gloriously in her blue 
eyes, until at last it seemed as her soul leaped 
forth upon its radiant waves, and in that moment 
her trembling form relapsed among the pillows, and 
she was gone." 

Thus we perceive that sensitiveness, which is first 
manifested in the mesmeric state, breaks in at rare in- 
tervals, during wakefulness or sleep, as vivid impres- 
sions or dreams, arises to clairvoyance as the spirit 
and physical body are separated more and more, and 
reaches its most intense expression at the moment of 
death, when the union between the two is severed. 

It is after this great event that the spiritual being, 
formed from attenuated substance, far beyond the 
horizon of the most ethereal known to the senses, 
is free from the environments of the physical 
body. It sees, hears, feels, with the organization of 
its new being, and is cognizant of a world unknown 
to the mortal senses. 



Thought Transference, 



The English Society for Psychical Research have 
given greater attention to thought transference than 
any other subject which has engaged its attention, 



100 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE. 

claiming that if it be proved, it becomes the foun- 
dation for a working theory, co-ordinating a vast 
number of related facts and phenomena. It was the 
conclusion of the committee after numerous experi- 
ments, that thought reading was an established 
fact. The adage, "The devil is near when you 
talk about him," is proven daily ; for when an indi- 
vidual is going to a certain place expecting to meet 
certain ones, his thoughts go before him, and im- 
press themselves. When those connected by inti- 
mate relations think of each other, their thoughts 
vibrate in responsive brains. Distance has inappre- 
ciable influence on the transference of thought. It 
may take place in the same room, or when the two 
persons are thousands of miles apart. As a personal 
experience I will relate one of many similar inci- 
dents which have awakened my attention to this 
wonderful phenomenon. Sitting by my desk one 
evening, suddenly as a flash of light, the thought 
came to write an article for the Harbinger of Light, 
published at Melbourne, Australia. I had by cor- 
respondence become acquainted with the editor, W. 
H. Terry, but there had been no letters passed for 
nearly a year. I had not thought of him or his jour- 
nal, for I do not know how long a time, and I was 
amused at first with the idea of writing on the sub- 
ject suggested. But the impression was so strong 
that I prepared and forwarded an article. Nearly 
two months passed before I received a letter from 
Mr. Terry requesting me to write an article on the 
subject, on which I had written, and making due 
allowance for time, the dates of our letters were the 
same. In our experience this crossing of letters 
answering each other, has twice occurred, the second 
by Mr. Terry answering a request of mine. 
I have gathered a series of facts illustrative and 



DR. NICOLAS'8 EXPERIENCE. 101 

demonstrative, by their culminative evidence. If 
any one statement be questioned as improbable, we 
must consider the probabilities increase with each 
and every instance corroboratory, and when a con- 
stantly augmenting series continue in the same line, 
each number adding strength to the others, the pro- 
bability becomes a certainty. 

Dr. Mcolas, Count de- Gonemys, of Corfu, gives 
his personal experience in March number, 1885, of 
the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research : 

" In the year 1869 I was officer of health in the 
Hellenic army. By command of the War Office I was 
attached to the garrison of the Island of Zante. As 
I was approaching the Island in a steamboat, to take 
up my new position, and about two hours distance 
from the shore, I heard a sudden inward voice say 
to me over and over in Italian, 'Go to Voterra.' I 
had no association with the name of M. Voterra, a 
gentleman of Zante, with whom I was not even ac- 
quainted, although I had once seen him, ten years 
before. I tried the effect of- stopping my ears, and 
of trying to distract myself by conversation with 
the bystanders, but all was useless, and I continued 
to hear the voice in the same way. At last we 
reached the land; I proceeded to my hotel and 
busied myself with my trunks, but the voice con- 
tinued to harass me. After a time a servant came 
and announced to me that a gentleman was at the 
door who wished to speak to me at once. i Who is 
the gentleman?' I asked. 'M. Voterra,' was the 
reply. M. Voterra entered, weeping violently, in 
uncontrollable distress, imploring me to follow him 
at once, and see his son who was in a dangerous con. 
dition. I found a young man in maniacal frenzy, 
naked in an empty room, and despaired of by all the 
doctors of Zante for the past five years." 



102 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE. 

By magnetism Dr. Nicolas effected a perfect cure, 
the maniac becoming in the mesmeric state clair- 
voyant. 

The following is by C. Ede, M. D., Guilford (J. 8. 
P. E., July, 1882). 

" Lady G. and her sister had been spending the 
evening with their mother, who was in her usual 
health and spirits when they left her, In the mid- 
dle of the night the sister awoke in a fright, and 
said to her husband, ' I must go to my mother at 
once; do order the carriage. I am sure she is ill.' 
The husband, after trying in vain to convince his 
wife that it was only a fancy, ordered the carriage. 
As she was approaching the house where two roads 
met, she saw Lady G.'s carriage. When they met 
each asked the other why she was there. The same 
reply was made by both. ' I could not sleep, feeling 
sure my mother was ill, and so I came to see.' As 
they came in sight they saw their mother's confi- 
dential maid at the door, who told them when they 
arrived, that their mother had been taken suddenly 
ill, and was dying, and had expressed an earnest 
wish to see her daughters." 

The daughters having so recently parted from 
their mother, made them peculiarly susceptible to 
her influence. 

T. W. Smith, Ealing, W. England (J. S. R R., 
July, 1882), had this experience, showing the close 
bonds which unite husband and wife : 

"I left my house, ten miles from London, in the 
morning as usual, and in the course of the day was 
on the way to Victoria Street, when, in attempting 
to cross the road made slippery by the water cart, I 
fell, and was nearly run over by a carriage coming 
in an opposite direction. The fall and the fright 
shook me considerably, but beyond that I was un- 



A CLERGYMAN'S EXPERIMENT. 103 

injured. On reaching home, I found my wife wait- 
ing anxiously, and this is what she related to me: 
She was in the kitchen when she suddenly dropped, 
exclaiming, 'My God, he's hurt !' Mrs. S. who was 
near her heard the cry, and both agreed as to the 
time, etc." 

The Rev. P. H. Newham (J. 8. P. B., Feb. 1887), re- 
lates an extended series of experiments in will 
power. He was able while in church to draw the at- 
tention of any one in the audience by simply direct- 
ing his thoughts to them. He experimented at a 
series of concerts, selecting those in front of him so 
that they could not catch his eye by simply raising 
their heads. "It was very interesting," he writes, 
"to see them first fidget about in their seats and at 
last turn their heads around and look about them, 
as if to see whence the uncomfortable feeling that 
influenced them proceeded." 

The London Spectator for Christmas, 1881, con- 
tains an interesting story by A. J. Duffield, of 
thought transference. The gist of this story is that 
a Mr. Strong went to Lake Superior and became 
foreman of the Franklin copper mine. He fell sick 
and would have died but for the care of a lady whose 
husband was a director of the mining company. 
She had him carried to her own house, and nursed 
him with kindest care until he recovered. Seven 
years after this event, when he had drifted away 
from the mines, he was sitting by himself one even- 
ing4*when he suddenly saw this kind lady in a room 
with nothing in it, no fire, no food. She was calm 
and quiet, with the same face she had when she 
nursed him in the fever. He thereby was made 
deeply conscious that she was in distress, and sent 
her a most liberal amount of money by mail. The 
day after he received a letter from the lady, saying 



104 • THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE. 

that her husband was sick, and that they were in 
great suffering, and asking for aid. 

In this instance the mind of Capt. Strong was 
bound to his preserver with strong bonds, love, 
gratefulness and expectation of some time repaying 
his great obligation. It was in proper condition for 
the reception of such thoughts, while, on the other 
hand, under the pressure of suffering, the lady's 
mind was in a condition to give force to the emanat- 
ing thoughts. 

The Springfield Homestead published what it called 
an odd circumstance, but so far from being odd is of 
proverbially common occurrence. A Mrs. A. and 
her daughter called on their relative, Mrs. B., of 
Central Street. On their way thither they remarked 
how pleased they would be if Mrs. B.'s daughter, 
Mrs. L., of Hartford, could only be there too. This 
remark was repeated to Mrs. B., and she replied that 
her thoughts were similar. Then one of them re- 
called the old saying that the combined thoughts of 
three women can bring any one from any place, 
and the reply was made that if wishing would bring 
Mrs. L. she would surely come. Mrs. B. prepared 
strawberry cake, saying her daughter, Mrs. L., was 
fond of it, and that she was going to lay a plate for 
her just as though she were there. As they were sit- 
ting down to *tea, the door bell rang and in came the 
much wished for Mrs. L., greatly to their surprise. 
When asked how she happened to come, she replied 
that she did not intend to do so until that day, and 
decided to do so because tormented with the impres- 
sion that some one wanted to see her. She is not 
accustomed to come to Springfield, not having 
visited her sister before in a year. 

Henry Watson, of Mill Village, Pa., was suddenly 
impressed that his services were needed at a certain 



A WONDERFUL APPARITION 105 

point on French Creek. There was no assignable 
cause, for his going, and he resisted it as a vagary. 
The impression, however, grew so strong that he 
yielded as to a charm. When within a short dis- 
tance of the spot cries for help reached his ears. In 
the creek he found George Dowler and wife strug- 
gling for their lives, They had attempted to ford 
the creek, and missing the way were submerged. 
He was holding on to the horse while the swift cur- 
rent was carrying his wife to her death. Taking a 
boat, Watson rescued her from certain death. Had 
he not arrived at that very moment, she would have 
been inevitably drowned. 

L. M. Hastings of Osceola, Iowa, had a son mur- 
dered near Grand Island, Neb. The night after the 
crime was committed he awoke about midnight 
with his attention fixed on an apparition at the foot 
of the bed. He saw the representation of two men 
with great distinctness, and something told him that 
they were the pictures of the murderers of his son. 
He studied them carefully until they faded out of 
sight, and then arose and wrote a description which 
was forwarded to the prosecuting attorney. It was 
found to be a thoroughly accurate description of the 
men who were then under arrest and who were, with- 
out doubt the guilty parties. Mr. Hastings had never 
seen these men nor received any description of them. 

Transference of Thought and Pain.— Mrs. Arthur 
Severn, the distinguished landscape painter (J. S. P. 
R., March, 1884), writes of an accident to her hus- 
band which at once impressed itself on her : 

"I woke with a start, feeling I had a hard blow 
on my mouth, and a distinct sense that I had been 
cut under my upper lip, and held my handkerchief 
to the part as I sat up in bed, and after a few. sec- 



106 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE. 

onds, when I removed it, I was astonished not to see 
any blood, and only then realized that it was impos- 
sible that anything could have struck me, and so I 
thought it was only a dream. I looked at my watch 
and saw it was seven, and finding Arthur (my hus- 
band) was not in the room, I concluded he had gone 
out on the lake for a sail as it was fine. 

"At breakfast (half -past nine) Arthur came in 
rather late, and I noticed he rather purposely sat 
farther away from me than usual, and put his hand- 
kerchief to his lip in the way T had done. I said: 
4 Arthur, why are you doing that ? I know you have 
hurt yourself ; but I'll tell you why afterwards.' He 
said : ' Well, when I was sailing, a sudden squall 
came, throwing the tiller suddenly around, and it 
struck me a hard blow in the mouth under the up- 
per lip and it has been bleeding a good deal and 
won't stop.' I then asked: 'At what time did it 
happen?' He answered: ' It must have been about 
seven o'clock.' I then told what had happened to 
me, much to his surprise and all who were at the 
table." 

Rev. J. M. Wilson, head master of Clifton College 
(in J. 8. P. R.j March, 1884), presents a fact which, 
while admitting of telegraphic explanation, may be 
referred to a higher source : 

"I was at Cambridge at the end of my second 
term in full health, boating, football playing, and 
the like, and by no means subject to hallucinations 
or morbid fancies. One evening I felt very ill, trem- 
bling with no apparent cause ; nor did it seem to me 
at the time to be a physical illness, or chill of any 
kind. I was frightened; I was totally unable to 
overcome it. I remember a struggle with myself, 
resolving that I would go on with my mathematics, 
but it was in vain. I became convinced that I was 



TRANSFERENCE OF SENSATION. 107 

dying. I went down to the room of a friend, who 
was on the same staircase. He exclaimed at me be- 
fore I spoke. He pulled out a whisky bottle and 
backgammon board, but I could not face it. "We sat 
over the fire, and he brought some one else to look 
at me. Toward eleven, after some three hours, I 
got better, went to bed and after a time to sleep, and 
next morning was quite well. In the afternoon 
came a letter stating that my twin brother had died 
the evening before in Lincolnshire." 

Rev. Canon Warburton, Winchester, England (J. 
8. P. B., May 1884), relates the following, which is 
of interest as an example of transference of thought 
and of sensation: 

"I went from Oxford to stay a day or two with 
my brother, then a barrister at 10 Fish Street, Lin- 
coln's Inn. When I reached his chambers I found a 
note on the table apologizing for his absence, and 
saying he had gone to a dance, and intended to be 
at home soon after one o'clock. Instead of going to 
bed, I dozed in an arm-chair, but started up wide 
awake exactly at one, ejaculating, ' By Jove, he's 
down ! ' and seeing him coming out of the drawing 
room into the brightly illuminated landing, catching 
his foot in the edge of the top stair and falling head- 
long, just saving himself by his elbows and hands. 
(The house was one I had never seen, and I did not 
know where he was.) I again fell adoze for half 
an hour, and was awakened by my brother suddenly 
coming in and saying: ' Ah ! there you are ! I have 
just had as narrow an escape of breaking my neck 
as I ever had in my life. Coming out of the ball- 
room, I caught my foot and tumbled full length 
down stairs. ' " 

The following is vouched for by Miss Millicent 
Ann Page, sister of the Rev. A. Shaw Page, Vicar 



108 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE. 

of Lesly, England, to whom it was related by Mrs. 
Elizabeth Broughton, Edinburgh: 

"Mrs. Broughton aroused her husband, telling 
him something dreadful had happened in France. 
He begged her to go asleep again. She assured him 
that she was not asleep when she saw what she in- 
sisted in then telling him. First, a carriage acci- 
dent, which she did not see, but she saw the result : 
a broken carriage, collected crowd, a figure gently 
raised and carried into the nearest house, and then 
a figure lying on the bed, which she recognized as 
the Duke of Orleans. Gradually friends collected 
around the bed, among them several members of 
the royal family — the Queen, then the King — all 
tearfully, silently watching the dying Duke. One 
man, she could see his back, but did not know who 
he was, was a doctor. He stood bending over the 
Duke, feeling his pulse with his watch in his other 
hand. Then all passed away. In the morning she 
wrote down in her journal all she had seen. It was 
before the days of the telegraph, and two or more 
days passed before the Times announced the death 
of the Duke of Orleans. 

"A short time after, she visited Paris, recognized 
the place of the accident, and received an explana- 
tion of her impression. The doctor who attended 
the Duke was an old friend of hers ; and as he 
watched by the bed he said his mind was constantly 
occupied with her and her family. The reason, 
therefor, was the remarkable likeness between the 
members of her family and those of the royal family 
then present. 'I spoke of you and yours when I 
reached home, and thought of you many times that 
evening,' said the doctor. 'The likeness between 
yourself and the royal family was never so strong. 
Here was a. link between us, you see.'" 



A VISION. 109 

Certain dreams may be explained by thought- 
transference, which is liable to take place during 
the varying moods of slumber as while awake. 
Rev. J. C. Learned writes (J. 8. P. B.) : " It was in 
1883 that I took charge of the Unitarian Church in 
Exeter, K H. Five miles away, Rev. A. M. Bridge 
was preaching at Hampton Falls, with whom I some- 
times exchanged pulpits. After a year or so he gave 
up the work in this little parish, and somewhat later 
entered upon an engagement in the town of East 
Marshfield, Mass., as the railroad runs, eighty miles 
from Exeter. 

" On Wednesday, Dec. 13th, I860, on waking in 
the morning, I remarked to my wife upon the very 
vivid and singular dream which I had had, and re- 
lated it fully. I had seen Mr. Bridge taken suddenly 
and violently ill. He seemed to be in a school-room. 
He sank down helpless and was borne away by 
friendly hands. I was by him, and assisted others 
in whatever way I could. But he grew worse ; the 
open air did not revive him ; a leaden pallor soon 
spread over his features ; peculiar spots which I had 
never seen before, like moles or discoloration of the 
skin, appeared upon his face, and after much suf- 
fering he died. Immediately after breakfast, and 
while we were still speaking of the dream, a ring 
at the door admitted Mr. Wells Healy, an old 
parishioner of Mr. Bridge, at Hampton Falls. I 
guessed the nature of his message. He had come 1 
to ask me to attend the funeral services of his for- 
mer minister. 

" I attended the funeral as requested. I learned 
from the family the particulars of his death, which 
coincided remarkably in several points with the 
dream already repeated to my wife, and when I 
looked at the dead man in his coffin, my attention 



110 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE, 

was fixed by the peculiar spots on his face to which 
I have alluded, and which were stamped on my 
memory." 

Double Presence.— Appearance of Living Persons 
at a Distance. — It would appear that this projection 
of thought to distant localities may be so strong as 
to carry the appearance of the projector with it. 
This may be explained by the aid of psychometry, 
or by the actual projection of the psychic individu- 
ality, so as to give the impression of identity, and not 
only that, but to receive and retain impressions on 
the part of the projector. The double presence which 
has so perplexed the student of these mysteries thus 
admits of solution, and becomes a part of the fabric 
created by sensitiveness to thought impressions. 
These appearances of living persons as apparitions 
or ghosts, have been repeatedly employed as evidence 
of the subjectiveness of ghostly apparitions of the 
dead ; that as one must be unreal so must the other. 
But this conclusion is unwarranted, as by the prin- 
ciples here advocated the apparitions of the living 
are under the same law as those of the dead. 

It is possible for the independent clairvoyant at 
any time, in spirit, to visit distant localities and per- 
sons, and if the latter are sufficiently sensitive, they 
will recognize the clairvoyant's presence. The phe- 
nomenon of "double presence," in this manner can 
be produced, as somnambulism may be, by artificial 
means ; that is through mesmerism or hypnotism. 

Many remarkable stories are recorded of the dou- 
ble, some of which are unbelievable unless the princi- 
ples heretofore stated are understood. 

Josiah Gilbert, in the London Speculator, gives the 
following pleasing narrative : 

" A son of a family named Watkinson, residing in 



MORE REMARKABLE CASES. Ill 

Lancashire, had gone to America. One summer 
Sunday afternoon, they were attending services and 
occupying a large square pew near the pulpit. It 
was hot, the door of the small building was wide 
open, and one of the party who sat looking down the 
aisle could see out into the meeting-house yard, 
which was shaded by tall trees. Suddenly, to his in- 
tense surprise, he saw the absent brother approach- 
ing through the trees, enter at the chapel door, walk 
up the aisle, come to the very door of the pew itself, 
and lay his hand upon it as though he would take a 
seat with them. At that moment others of the 
family saw him also, but at that instant he van- 
ished. 

"This strange occurence naturally raised sad fore- 
bodings, but in course of time a letter arrived, and it 
appeared that the brother was alive and well. He 
was then written to and asked if anything peculiar 
had happened on that Sunday. He replied that it 
was odd that he should remember anything about a 
Sunday so long passed, but certainly something had 
happened on that Sunday . He had come in over- 
powered with heat and had thrown himself on his 
bed, fallen asleep and had a strange dream. He 
found himself among the trees of a country chapel; 
service was going on ; he saw them all, the door 
being open, sitting in their pews ; he walked up the 
aisle and put his hand on the pew door to open it, 
when he suddenly, and to his great chagrin, awoke." 

S. F. Deane, M. D., of Carlton, Neb., had a remark- 
able experience which he relates as follows : 

"After my arrival in Nebraska, I made my home 
with my daughters. At the time I left Wisconsin, 
my wife was not well and I hesitated to leave her. 
After I had been absent about three weeks, I had 
retired to my room, which had a door opening into 



112 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE. 

the street. About two o'clock in the morning while 
awake, with sufficent light from a partially obscured 
moon to see distinctly any person in the room, fully 
conscious of all my surroundings, and with my face 
toward the door, I saw it open and a person step 
into the room, which I at once recognized as the ex- 
act image of my wife. She came directly across the 
room, knelt at my bedside, put her arms about my 
neck, kissed me and said she had been very sick but 
was better now. Then she said she must go and see 
Adelaide, and arose and passed across the room, to 
the door of our daughter's room. She was gone a 
few minutes when she again came through the open 
bedroom door into my room, looked at me, as much 
as to say good-bye, passed out at the door, and was 
gone. 

"While she was present a peculiar calmness came 
over me ; but when she was gone a great anxiety 
took possession of me, and could I have taken a 
train, I should have at once started for home. But 
I at last resolved to await a letter, which came in 
due time from my son. He wrote : ' Mother is quite 
sick, though better than night before last, when 
about half-past two or three o'clock in the morning 
we thought for twenty or thirty minutes she was 
dead. She lay insensible, pulsation ceased, or only 
fluttered at intervals, and respiration seemed sus- 
pended, but she rallied and is now in a fair way to 
recover.' She did recover and enjoyed a fair de- 
gree of health." 

There is no limit to the facts of this class which 
might be collected. Enough have been here pro- 
duced to show that coincidence offers a poor apology 
as an explanation. The student will observe also, 
that however carefully the facts are selected bear- 
ing on this one point of thought transference, it is 



THE THOUGHT ATMOSPHERE. 113 

impossible, so intimately related are the branches of 
psychic science, to have them entirely free from the 
possibility of other explanations. Granting that 
thought may be transferred from one mortal to an- 
other, admits that a spirit may transfer its thoughts 
to a mortal also, and hence a spirit seeing a friend 
in distress may act as a messenger. But in such a 
case thought is transferred, and in the same manner. 
The sensitive on one side receives the pulsations of. 
thought from the other, through and by means of the 
psychic ether. 

It will be thus seen that there is no mystery in one 
mind becoming cognizant of the thoughts of another 
mind, for if in sympathy, such a result is sure to fol- 
low. As a lamp gives light, because it is able to set 
the light medium in motion, or give off waves there- 
in, so the brain gives off waves, or is a pulsating 
center in the psychic-ether. These waves go out- 
ward and form the sphere of the individual, as the 
waves of light go out and form the sphere of light 
around an incandescent body. 

To be recognized, they must strike against a sen- 
sitive or sympathetic brain, wherein they may be 
reproduced. By sympathetic, we mean one which, 
for want of a better term, we will say is similarly at- 
tuned. Thus, when two musical instruments are 
placed at some distance from each other, and 
one is played, if they are not attuned in harmony 
the other will give no response ; but if they are, 
then when one is touched, the other answers note 
for note. 

The brain, being a pulsating center, its thoughts, 
as they go out in waves, have to other brains, a tan- 
gible representation. The psychic-ether, pulsating 
with innumerable waves, may be regarded as a uni- 
versal thought atmosphere, and the sensitive brain 



114 THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE. 

is able to gather from it thoughts and ideas which 
its pulsations express. 

If any reliance can be placed on the observations 
of the most credible witnesses, whose evidence would 
be received on any other subject, and in law would 
be given power to decide on life or death, these 
facts of Thought Transference cannot be rejected. 
If they are received, they demand explanation. If 
thought passes from one mind to another, or, as it is 
often expressed, the will influences a distant person, 
it is self-evident that something passes from one to 
the other. What is this something ? Facts conflict 
with the hypothesis of its being matter radiated from 
one individual to another, as light was once supposed 
to be transmitted. It passes too readily through 
vast thicknesses of solid matter, and is too instan- 
taneous in its action, to consist of radiant particles. 
On the other hand, all of its phenomena show 
a striking relationship to light, heat and kindred 
forces. 

How is this Influence Exerted ?— Admitting that 
there is a psychic-ether, in which thinking produces 
waves, how does one individual influence another 
thereby ? If the brain vibrates like the strings of 
a musical instrument, as no two are alike, no two 
vibrate alike. This is more than a mere illustra- 
tion. Both depend on similar laws, for the string 
excites vibrations in the air, which are felt by 
the nerves of the tympanum of the ear. Think- 
ing creates undulations in ether, which are im- 
pressed on other minds. The string of the instru- 
ment excites similar vibrations in contiguous strings; 
for the atmosphere transmits the waves of sound. 

This is very beautifully shown by a simple experi- 
ment, which equally well illustrates the method by 



AN ILLUSTRATION. 115 

which mind influences mind. If a plate of glass is 
strewn with sand, and, while held in a horizontal 
position, a bow drawn across its edge, a musical 
sound will be produced from the vibration of the 
plate, and the sand, by the impulse, forms into 
various geometric lines, according to the note pro- 
duced — each note giving rise to a figure peculiar 
to itself. So invariably is this the case that a piece 
of music might be accurately written from the forms 
assumed by the sand. 

Now, if a piece of parchment or paper be stretched, 
with proper precautions, across the top of a large 
bell glass and stewn with sand, and the glass plate 
held over it horizontally, and the bow drawn across 
its edge, the forms assumed by the sand on the 
paper will accurately correspond with the forms 
on the glass. If the glass is slowly removed to 
greater and greater distances, the correspondence 
will continue until the distance becomes too great 
for the air to transmit the vibrations. 

When a slow air is played on a flute near this 
apparatus, each note calls up a particular form in 
the sand, which the next note effaces and establishes 
its own. The motion of the sand will even detect 
sounds that are inaudible. 

Professor Wheaton devised a means of beautifully 
illustrating this sympathy. If a sounding board is 
placed so as to resound to all the instruments of the 
orchestra, and connected by a metallic rod of con- 
siderable length with the sounding-board of a harp 
or piano, the instrument will accurately repeat the 
notes transmitted. 

The nervous system, in its two-fold relation to the 
physical and spiritual being, is inconceivably more 
finely organized than the most perfect musical in- 
strument, and is possessed of finer sensitiveness. 



116 . THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE. 

But it must not be inferred that all minds are 
receptive. Light falls on all substances alike, but 
is very differently affected. One class of bodies ab- 
sorbs all but the yellow rays ; another, all but the 
blue; another, all but the red, because these sub- 
stances are so organized that they respond only to 
waves of the colors reflected. 

Some individuals have the ear so organized that 
they can hear certain sounds, but are totally deaf 
to others. The waves of sound strike all tympanums 
alike; yet in these instances they are incapable of 
responding to certain waves. Some person who de- 
light in music, although all the lower notes are 
plainly heard, as soon as the tune rises to a high 
key, can not hear a single sound. In others, this is 
reversed. The eye of some individuals is similarly 
arranged — some colors being undiscernable, while 
others are perceptible. The vibrations are the same 
in all these cases, but owing to peculiarities of or- 
ganization are not felt. As musical instruments to 
respond must be attuned in harmony, so there must 
be corelated harmony between minds which trans- 
mit and receive thoughts. All minds give out vi- 
brations, as all musical strings give out sounds ; and 
as there must be a corresponding string to receive 
its notes, so there must be not only a sensitive but 
harmoniously attuned mind to receive the thought 
vibrations. 

Individuals not mutually harmonious — at least 
in some point — do not excite a mental influence on 
each other ; but if they are thus organized, they will 
influence each other. This is unavoidable, whether 
the will is excited or not ; but if the stronger will is 
exerted, its power is proportionally greater, and it 
will magnetize the weaker ; and the peculiar phenom- 
ena attending that mental state will be manifested. 



AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 117 

It is not the body which magnetizes or is magnet- 
ized ; it is the mind; and these effects are produced 
outside of the physical system. The fact that one 
person can magnetize another by the simple power 
of the will, though at a distance, is evidence that the 
mind in this exercise of power is independent of the 
body. 

If we grant, for the sake of the argument, that 
there is a spirit back of the physical aspect of mortal 
life, it will be readily seen that all that has been 
said of the transference of thought betweei? indi- 
viduals, holds true between spiritual beings, as this 
transference at last resides in the spirit-being. As 
man is a spirit incarnated, differing in that respect 
only from a disembodied spirit, the body is the only 
obstacle between him and the spirits above him. 
Sensitiveness to impressions from another, or from 
a spirit, rest on the same cause ; and in the higher 
realm of spirit, the transference of thought is con- 
trolled by the same laws, and reaches more perfect 
expression. 



Intimations of an Intelligent Force. 



Belief in Guardian Angels. — Memory brings back 
the days of our childhood and again we hear our 
mother sing that simple song of joy, which, it is said, 
Bishop McKendee murmured on his dying bed : 

Bright angels have from glory come, 

They're round my bed ; they're in my room ; 

They wait to waft my spirit home ; 
All is well ! All is well ! 



118 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

We approach the dark river of death alone, but we 
are not to cross without a guide. We may be blind 
to the light of the celestial sphere in the full pulse of 
health ; we may be insensible to the presence of the 
nearest and dearest of our departed ; yet when death 
loosens the bonds which unite the physical with the 
spiritual body, what is known dimly as clairvoyance, 
(the full possession of the spiritual senses, bursts upon 
the awakened spirit. Then the dying find that death 
is life, and to leave earthly friends is to meet the 
hosts of heaven. 

That there are guardian angels has been taught 
from immemorial time, and in some dim form is a be- 
lief of all except the lowest races of mankind. 

It is a beautiful belief, full of .consolation, of assur- 
ance, and comfort to the struggling and striving. 
Row hard may press the iron hand of fate, how 
sharp the flinty stones beneath our bleeding feet, we 
think of those blessed messengers by our side, and 
feel that our burdens are for the purpose of giving us 
strength, else they would turn us aside to more 
pleasant paths. We know that they are with us in 
the darkest hours, and enjoy with us the days of our 
sunshine. We delve in the soil and smirch of the 
world, and the physical being obscures and overlaps 
the spiritual to such a degree that our horizon 
is shut down on that side by thick clouds, and only 
at long intervals can a ray of light penetrate the 
darkness. 

Our lives might be so well ordered that we would 
be as conscious of the presence of these guardians 
as of earthly friends. What is possible at rare 
moments of lucidity is possible at all times under like 
conditions. The faultis not on their side, but on 
ours. The sun forever shines in the heavens, just 
above the thin vail of clouds, and if the sea does not 



THE WORLD OF SPIRIT. 119 

reflect the starry night, it is because of its agitated 
surface . 

We do not see through the thin vail, which separ- 
ates the world of spirits and men. We cannot see 
the air which surges a profound and agitated ocean 
above and around us. Without material rays of light* 
we could not see material things, and would be prac- ' 
tically blind. 

If we ascend a mountain in the night, we can 
only perceive the gray and mossy rocks a few yards 
ahead of us, bordering the path, beyond which would 
be impenetrable darkness, gloomy abysses, seemingly 
unfathomable, and above, the dark night-clouds 
without a star. On the summit we rest awaiting the 
morning, seeing nothing, but scenting the faint odors 
of pine and the fragrance of flowers borne upwards 
on the gentle air. Patiently we wait until the gray 
East blushes with a long horizontal line of light flam- 
ing upward toward the crimson clouds, and the dis- 
tant mountain-tops with the silver flood. Lo ! the 
orb of day pushes the clouds aside, and flashes over 
the world in triumph. What transformation ! What 
grandeur and beauty ! Valleys of eden, loveliness at 
our feet, and snowy summits above our heads ! 
Grand forests clothing the hillsides, bloom and flower 
everywhere; gem-like lakes, and flashing torrents, 
endless prospective of mountains on one side, and of 
plain on the other All night we were in the midst 
of this grandeur and beauty, yet saw it not. We' 
seemed suspended between earth and sky, and around 
us only blackness, yet all this splendor of scenery 
existed the same as it did before the light made it 
visible. 

Thus the world of spirit may exist around us, un- 
seen, unfelt, except as we perceive the odor of aspho- 
dels, or hear the faint murmur of angel whispers, 



120 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

for our eyes are blind to the light, by which it is re- 
vealed. 

Facts Unreferable to Previously Considered Causes. 

— After referring to hypnotism, somnambulism, 
clairvoyance and thought transference, a great mass 
of the facts presented for explanation, there still re- 
main a large number which stand apart by them- 
selves, and which bring an outside or independent 
intelligence with them, which no exaltation on the 
part of the actor can supply. The only adequate 
or even plausible explanation of these facts is that 
which refers them to the agency of intelligent be- 
ings beyond our ken. The presence of such entities 
may or may not be recognized by the percipient. 
The ideas and motives may be impressed all the 
same. We may be assured that unconciously those 
who by study and practical experience become 
adept in particular lines of thought or practical 
affairs, are the most proper mediums for the com- 
munication of spirits dwelling in the same sphere 
of thought, and that such communications are con- 
tinuously made unconciously to the percipients. The 
weird stories which come up, from the rugged toilers 
of the sea are full of interest in this particular. 
The infinite solitude of waters ; the long and lonely 
watches, with the sweep of waves and the silent 
stars, conduce to a state of abstraction and reverie, 
peculiarly favorable to the reception of impressions. 
If there is need in this world of the watchful care 
of guardian angels, the sailor on the lone ship which 
plows the trackless waste at the mercy of the ele- 
ments requires them most. Human skill and fore- 
sight may provide to the utmost, and yet there re. 
mains the greater dangers which can not be fore- 
seen pr provided against. The sailor, feeling that 



UNREFERABLE FACTS. 121 

he is helpless in the hands of the elements, becomes 
superstitious, though often what is called in him 
superstition, is belief in influences which future 
knowledge may accept as valuable accessions to 
the realm of mental science. I have from the lips 
of Capt. D. B. Edwards, the narrative of two in- 
cidents in the life of his brother, which illustrates 
this faculty of intuition, if we may give it that 
name ; and if one were to gather up similar stories 
which are told by the officers, volumes might be 
filled. 

Capt. John B. Edwards was in command of the 
steamship "Monterey," one of the New York and 
New Orleans line of steamers. In one of his voy- 
ages he came up with Sandy Hook in a terrible 
storm. The air was so full of driving snow that the 
officers could not see the length of the vessel. The 
sea was high and rapidly increasing, and no pilot 
responded. To remain was impossible ; to go on 
was almost certain destruction. If the Captain could 
make the light-ship he would know his bearings, 
and be able to steer into harbor; but in that drift 
of blinding snow and rush of waters, in which he 
had made his approach from the sea, he had been 
unable to make observations, and had no assur- 
ance that he had not deviated from his course under 
the influence of the drift of wind or current, at least 
to the variation of a league or more. In his per- 
plexity he ordered the ship to be stopped, and for 
a moment reflected on the difficulties of his posi- 
tion. While thus waiting, with every sense strained 
to the utmost, an impression came like a flash, that 
the light-ship lay in a certain direction. He 
immediately ordered the officers to keep a sharp 
lookout forward, for he would run ten minutes in 
a certain direction to test his impression. The great 



122 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

wheels again revolved, and the steamer swung 
obedient to command, and rushed on into the drift. 
In six minutes the mate on the bow threw up his 
hands, crying: " Hard-a-port ! hard-a-port ! " and the 
steamer quickly responding to her helm, passed the 
stern of the light-ship, from which the Captain easily 
took his bearings and safely steamed into the port 
of New York. 

During the war Capt. Edwards was coast pilot for 
the Government steamer " Vanderbilt." During one 
voyage he came up to the " Hook;" a storm was com- 
ing on and no pilot in sight. The Commodore came 
to the wheel-house and asked Capt. Edwards if he 
thought he could take the ship into port. Edwards 
shrank and trembled at the question, for he knew 
the ship was drawing as much, if not more water, 
than was on the bar, and the responsibility thus 
thrust upon him was overwhelming. But suddenly 
he was forced to speak, replying without hesitation: 
"Yes, sir." "Go ahead," was the order of the Com- 
modore. With every faculty intensely active, his 
strong and steady hand held the wheel, and the ship 
went over the bar without touching, and all was 
well. His ability and trustworthiness for the action 
received the highest recommendation from the Com- 
modore. 

It is sad to learn that this noble man sacrificed his 
own life in caring for his mate, who was a victim of 
yellow fever in the hospital of Rio Janeiro. From 
the many remarkable experiences in his own life, 
Capt. D. B. Edwards related, I take one which is 
characteristic of the others. He is a strong and 
powerfully built man, with every line indicative of 
honest resolution and endurance. He has retired 
from the sea-faring life, but has made his home by 
the coast. He impresses one with rare and sterling 



SAVED BY A PREMONITION. 123 

honesty and purity of character, and a self-contained 
repose which is a peculiarity of most officers who 
have passed their lives at sea. 

He said that one bright day in March, sailing up 
Long Island, he was overtaken by a snow-storm 
which suddenly concealed all landmarks, and the 
wind momentarily increasing, soon became a terrific 
gale. In that narrow strait one has not to sail for a 
great length of time in the wrong direction to reach 
the coast. As night came on the situation became 
more appalling, and wreck most certain. He gave 
the wheel to the mate and allowed himself time to 
reflect. He could arrive at no conclusion. Sud- 
denly it flashed through his mind to steer by the 
lead! How? "Why, where the Thames enters 
the Sound it is deeper. When you reach that 
channel follow it into safety.'' It was the only 
chance, and he seized it. He went to the bow, for 
he would trust no one, ordering the mate to impli- 
citly, and with utmost readiness, obey orders, and 
hold the vessel on her present course. Standing at 
the bow, with the spray falling in torrents over him, 
and the wind straining the spars to the utmost, he 
cast the lead to find the ordinary level of the Sound. 
He continued to cast until suddenly deeper water 
was indicated, and with joy he gave the order that 
changed the course of the vessel, and in a few min- 
utes brought her into the still waters of the Thames. 
Then, he said, in a change of warm, dry clothing, 
they sat in the snug cabin and drank their hot coffee 
with a sense of peace words can but feebly express. 

Saved From Death by a Premonition. — It may be 

said that under the stimulus of danger and great 
emergency, the mental faculties become intensified, 
and that we can not fix their limits ; that all that 



i-M AN INTELLIGENT FORCE, 

was required of Capt, Edwards was courage to act 
in response to knowledge he had acquired, but which 

was latent until called forth by the extraordinary 
demand. We shall now introduce facts to which 
this pleading will not apply. The first shows two 

distinct intelligences, one of which was superior to 
that of mortals, for it could foresee the future, and 
must have acted on Capt. McGowan, to compel 
him to relinquish a well formed plan, without any 
assignable reason, and pursue one entirely different. 
The thought o\' the theater had not entered his 
mind, and he gave his boys no excuse for breaking 
his word with them. 

Capt. MoOowan, 12th U. S. I., thus relates this 
story (J. S. P. B., Feb., 1885): 

" [n Jan. L887, 1 was on leave of absence in Brook- 
lyn, with my two boys, then on a vacation from 
school. I promised to take them to the theater 
that night and engaged seats for us three. At 
the same time 1 had an opportunity to examine the 
interior of the theater, and went over it carefully, 
stage and all. These seats were engaged on the 
previous day, but on the day of the proposed visit 
it seemed as if a voice within me was constantly 
saying, 'Do not go to the theater; take the boys 
back to school.' I could not keep these words out 
of my mind ; they grew stronger and stronger, 
and at noon I told my friends and the boys I 
would not go to the theater. My friends remon- 
strated with me, and said 1 was cruel to deprive the 
boys of a promised and unfamiliar pleasure, and I 
partially relented ; but all the afternoon the words 
kept repeating themselves and impressing them- 
selves upon me. That evening, less than an hour 
before the doors opened, I insisted on the boys go- 
ing to New York with me. and spending the night 



8A VED FROM INTEMPERANCE. 125 

at a hotel convenient to the railroad, by which we 
could start in the early morning. I felt ashamed of 
the feeling which impelled me to act thus, but there 
seemed no escape from it. That night the theater 
was destroyed by fire, with the loss of 300 lives. Had 
I been present, from my previous examination of the 
building, I should certainly have taken my children 
over the stage when the fire broke out, in order to 
escape by a private exit, and would just as certainly 
have been lost as were all those who trusted to it, for 
that passage by an accident could not be used. . . . 
I never had a presentiment before nor since. " What 
was it that caused me, against my desire, to abandon 
the play after having secured the seats and care- 
fully arranged for the pleasure ? " 

Saved from Intemperance.— S. H. Mann, of Wash- 
ington, D. C, wrote the following personal experi- 
ence to Dr. M. L. Holbrook. When a youth, he was 
clerk in a country store, and formed the habit of 
saturating loaf sugar with brandy and eating it. It 
was in the early part of this century, and before the 
temperance movement had been inaugurated. At 
that time the use of alcoholic beverages was con- 
sidered almost as essential to health as food. He 
had regarded the saturated sugar as a pleasant con- 
fection and had not become aware of the strong 
hold the habit had taken on him, or how passion- 
ately fond of it he had become. One day he went 
into the cellar with his sugar, saturated it, and was 
in the act of raising it to his mouth, when his arm 
became paralyzed, and a voice out of the air, for he 
was alone, spoke to him in stern tones, saying : 
"Young man, stop! If you continue this habit you 
will die a drunkard!" He could not move his hand 
to his mouth, and at last he let the sugar drop as his 



126 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

hand fell helpless by his side. The occurrence made 
such a strong impression on him, that he became a 
total abstainer, at a time when nearly all drank, and 
has remained true to his convictions all his life. 

A Soldier's Life Sated by a Dream.— This story is 
yet more remarkable. Rev. L. W, Lewis, in his 
" Reminiscences of the War," published in the 
Christian Advocate, relates an instance where a 
dream saved the life of a soldier: "A man by the 
name of Williams had told a dream to his fellow- 
soldiers, some of whom related it to me months 
previous to the occurrence which I now relate. 
He dreamed that he crossed a river, marched 
over a mountain and camped near a church lo- 
cated in a w^ood, near which a terrible battle en- 
sued, and in a charge just as we crossed the ravine 
he was shot in the heart. On the ever memorable 
7th of December, 1862 (Battle of Prairie Grove, 
ISTorthern Arkansas), as we moved at double-quick 
to take our places in the line of battle, then already 
hotly engaged, we passed the church, a small frame 
building. I was riding in the flank of the command 
opposite to Williams, as we came in view of the 
house. 'That is the church I saw in my dream,' 
said he. I made no reply, and never thought of the 
matter again until the evening. We had broken the 
enemy's lines and were in full pursuit, when we 
came to a dry ravine in the wood ; and Williams 
said: ' Jnst on the other side of this ravine I was shot 
in my dream, and I'll stick my hat under my shirt.' 
Suiting the action to the word he doubled up his hat 
as he ran along and crammed it into his bosom. 
Scarcely had he adjusted it when a Minie ball 
knocked him out of line; jumping up quickly he 
pulled out his hat, waved it over his head shouting, 



AN ERROR CORRECTED. 127 

4 I'm all right ! ' The ball raised a black spot, about 
the size of a man's hand, just over his heart, and 
dropped into his shoe." 

Here the prophecy was a long time ahead, and 
foretold the exact coming of a ball depending on a 
combination of circumstances which would seem 
impossible for reason or intuition to foresee and fore- 
know. Its fulfillment was peculiar, for by guarding 
against it, the danger was averted and the dream 
proved untrue. 

An Error Corrected in a Remarkable Manner.— 

The head bookkeeper in one of the largest sewing 
machine companies in New York City, in balancing 
his books found an error of $5.00. It was a small 
sum, but as a mistake was as damaging as $500. He 
set his assistants at work to find it, yet day after day 
their labor was in vain. They worked for a week and 
accomplished nothing. He became greatly annoyed 
and rilled with anxiety. In his own words: "The 
third Sunday after the search was begun, I got up 
late after a sleepless night and started out on a walk 
for exercise. My mind was on my books, and I paid 
no attention to the direction I took. My surprise was, 
therefore, genuine when I found myself at the door 
of the company's office in Union Square, for I had not 
certainly intended to go there. Mechanically I put 
my hand in my pocket, drew out the key, opened the 
door and went in. As if in a dream I walked to the 
office, where I turned the combination and unlocked 
the safe. There were the books, a dozen of them in a 
row. I did not consider for a moment which to take 
up. It was by no volition on my part that my hand 
moved toward a certain one, and drew it from the 
safe. Placing it on the desk, I opened it ; my eye ran 
along the column of figures, and there before me, 



128 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

plain as day, was the missing 85.00. I made a note 
of the page, put the hook back in the safe, and went 
home. It was then noon. I lav down an A fell into a 
deep sleep from which I did not awake until nine 
o'clock on Monday morning. After a hearty break- 
fast I hastened to the office feeling like a new man. 
It seemed as if a burden had fallen from me, and I 
was walking on air. " 

This bookkeeper, by anxiety and overwork, had 
become very sensitive. He was by the account he 
gives of himself, in a state bordering on clairvoy- 
ance. He was automatically used, not by a "domi- 
nant idea,*' for the dominant idea caused his mistake, 
and that could not suggest to him the book and 
page, which were readily found by his hand being 
moved by some cause. As the hand could not move 
itself, it must have been acted on by an intelligent, 
independent force. 

A Mother Saves the Life of Her Son. — Of warn- 
ings there are no end, and, however much the truth 
of prophecy may be denied, it is certain that within 
at least narrow bounds future events may be fore- 
told. One instance of this being correctly done may 
be referred to coincidence, but two places the proba- 
bilities on the other side, and three makes it impos- 
sible. It will be readily comprehended that no guess 
told the soldier a ball would strike him at a certain 
time and place, or the father that the theater would 
be burned on a certain night. 

There is a series of facts which show direct inter- 
position of superior intelligence, of which the fol- 
lowing may be taken as examples. Col. Walter B. 
Daulay gives his personal experience when on ship- 
board the " Gulf of Lyons " in a gale of wind : 

"I had the mid watch. The night was dark and 



DEATH FORETOLD IN A VISION. 129 

terrible, the wind howled furiously and the heaving 
sea tossed our ship about like a bit of cork. I stood 
by the mizzen mast, holding on by the fife-rail, and 
shielding- my face from the blinding spray that 
came driving over the deck. Suddenly I heard my 
name pronounced as distinctly as I ever heard it in 
my life— ' Walter ! Walter !' and it was my mothers 
voice that spoke. She continued to call me from the 
gloom about the main mast, and without stopping to 
reflect, or thinking where I was, I leaped forward. 
Hardly had I reached the after-companion-way, 
when I heard a crash behind me, and was called to 
myself. I turned and found that an iron-banded 
burton-block had fallen from the top and struck the 
deck exactly where I had been standing! Had I 
remained by the fife-rail three seconds longer than 
I did, my brains would have been dashed out. I 
always regarded that as an interposition in my be- 
half of a power independent of human will." 

Death Foretold in a Yision. — The following facts 
are vouched for by S. Bigelow, a gentleman of un- 
questioned integrity and a shrewd observer. In the 
early days of our war one Albert Dexter, near Ionia, 
Mich., enlisted in Co. D, Third Michigan Cavalry. 
His sister, Mrs. John Dunham, living then and now 
in Ionia, had what she terms a vision the day before 
he enlisted in which she saw him — her brother Albert 
— on horseback ; saw him wheel and fall from his 
horse. She told Albert of her vision and importuned 
him not to go, but he made light of her fears and 
vision, and went with his company to the fields of 
blood and carnage, and often in his letters he re- 
ferred to his sister's fears and vision in a light and 
joyful mood ; but in his last letter he seemed to be- 
lieve in the vision and in its probable fulfillment 



130 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

More than two years had passed since the vision, and 
no unfavorable news from Albert, when one after- 
noon in autumn, as Mrs. Dunham was alone in her 
quiet home, she heard a loud rap at the door, opened 
it, saw no one, felt impressed, and queried with her- 
self, "Why can't they tell me ?" but could get noth- 
ing definite beyond her impressions, and the plain, 
loud rap about which she could not be mistaken. 
But during the quiet hours of night her spiritual 
vision was quickened, and she saw Albert on horse- 
back, advance, then wheel, and then saw him shot 
and fall, and as plainly as though she had been by 
his side. She saw just where he was hit, how he 
fell, etc. Hence she knew all, having full confidence 
in such manifestations, as they were not new to her. 

She suffered intense agony and a sleepless night, 
not expecting herself to survive ; was pale and hag- 
gard in the morning, and scarcely able to be up. She 
told her friends and family about the matter in de- 
tail, even to the writing of a letter by the lieutenant 
informing them. She gave the contents of the letter 
before it was written. This was on Tuesday night 
and following morning. The next Sunday Mrs D. 
was visiting six miles from Ionia, and during the 
day a messenger came bringing a letter, which John 
Dexter had just received from the lieutenant of the 
Third Michigan Cavalry, giving particulars of his 
brother Albert's death while engaged in action the 
previous Tuesday, confirming in every detail what 
Mrs. D. had seen and told ; and farther, she felt or 
saw the messenger with the letter while yet far from 
the house, and told him what he had, and gave the 
contents of the letter, assuring him that it it was no 
news to her. 

Another brother, James, enlisted and went to the 
war, and one evening as Mrs. D. was in bed and Mr. 



THE ASSASSINATION OF GARFIELD. 131 

D. was reading, they both heard plainly the report 
of a pistol (or what seemed to them such), and Mrs. 
D. saw Albert and James come in and fall near her 
bed, and told Mr. D. that James was dead, which 
was fully confirmed by letter in about two weeks. 

The Assassination of Garfield Predicted.— The as- 
sassination of Garfield was foretold by many sensi- 
tives, for that great event seemed to cast a strong 
shadow before it. Several of these prophecies have 
been published since the event, and consequently 
have lost their weight as evidence, while others had 
been widely published before the terrible tragedy. 
The following rests on the integrity of S. Bigelow, 
and is unquestionably true. 

A gentleman in Cleveland, 0., well known there, 
saw and knew that Garfield would be assassinated 
long before he left his quiet Mentor home, and was 
so oppressed with the knowledge that he told Mayor 
Rose and Dr. Streator, two very prominent and 
wealthy friends of Garfield, and both active politi- 
cians as well, and they conferred with others, and 
finally wrote to Garfield about it ; but the sensitive, 
in the meantime, felt impelled to do something, and 
that he must go and see Garfield and warn him, 
but being a stranger and in humble circumstances 
he thought he could not go; but he could get no 
peace until he did, and finally plucked up courage to 
undertake the, to him, dreaded mission, and went 
alone and sad, to Mentor. Garfield met him in per- 
son (not by secretary as he did others) at the door, 
and greeted him cordially, and thus enabled him 
to overcome his embarassment in a measure, and 
to talk freely, which he did, and as a consequence 
Garfield's bed was moved from his bedroom on the 
lower floor to the chamber. 



132 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

This precaution prevented the crime for a time, 
which was ripe for execution. The same gentleman 
felt impelled to go to Washington with the fateful 
vision, but was prevented from going, and thus un- 
warned, Garfield met his death. 

Omens. — Almost every one has good and bad 
omens, and although they may think that they have 
entirely outgrown such superstition, they will find 
that there yet lingers more or less of the feeling 
from education or heredity. They do not believe that 
seeing the moon over the left shoulder indicates 
bad luck, and over the right good fortune, yet they 
would prefer to see it over the right. They do not 
think Friday a more unlucky day than the other 
six, yet avoid commencing important business on 
that day. There are a great number of omens and 
signs, many of them peculiar to the individual ; 
others world-wide, and held from remote antiquity. 
Of these it may be said that while of themselves 
these signs and omens have no relation to the 
events they presage, if we suppose a person to ac- 
cept a certain omen as foreshadowing a certain 
event, a superior being foreknowing that event and 
desiring to impress it on the mind of such person, 
might use the sign to convey the warning. To fur- 
ther illustrate : There may be no connection between 
seeing the moon over one's right shoulder and a 
fortunate event in store ; but a superior being, fore- 
seeing that event, may so influence our minds as to 
make us catch a glimpse of the crescent on the 
right. 

Mrs. Bancroft, a daughter-in-law of the great his- 
torian, has described an uncanny circumstance 
which happened at a wedding in 1863, where the 
wives of Major Thos. Y. Brent and Capt. Eugene 



A DREAM REALIZED. 133 

Barnes, of the C. S. A. met, each wearing her bridal 
dress. While dressing for the occasion, Mrs. Brent's 
companion discovered a blood spot upon the dress of 
the Major's wife, which could not be accounted for, 
and somewhat excitedly exclaimed: "It is a bad 
omen !" Two days after, Mrs. Brent experienced a 
severe pain in the region of her heart, although at 
the time in the best of health. This occurred at the 
birth-place of her husband. Two days later she 
heard that while storming a Federal fortification, her 
husband was killed on July 4th, 1863, as far as she 
could learn at the identical time that she experienced 
the heart-pain. The Major was shot in the breast by 
a Minnie ball and instantly killed. Another fact oc_ 
curred at the time of finding the blood spot, and that 
was Mrs. Thomas Bright addressing the two ladies as 
"war widows." She believes in omens, and believes 
that these facts pointed to the death of the lady's hus- 
band, which occurred so soon after. 

A Dream Realized. — The Mobile Register published 
the following, under the title of " A Dream Realized," 
which should be regarded as a trance, in which state 
the transcendent knowledge was given by some 
superior intelligence : 

" A man named Bronson, who was an agent for a 
seed house, was travelling through Tennessee making 
collections. One night, after he had finished his busi- 
ness in Chattanooga, he made ready for a horseback 1 
ride of fifteen or twenty miles the next day. Upon 
retiring to his room for the night he sat down to smoke 
a cigar. 

"He was neither overtired nor sleepy, but, after 
smoking a few minutes, he had what he termed a 
vision. He was riding over the country on horseback; 
when at the junction of two roads he was joined by a 



134 ^L-ZV INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

stranger. He saw this man as plainly as one man can 
see another in broad daylight, noting the color of his 
hair and eyes and taking particular notice of the fact 
that the horse, which was gray in color, had a "y" 
branded on his left shoulder. 

" The two rode along together for a mile or more, 
and then came to a spot where a tree had been 
blown down and fallen across the narrow highway. 
They turned into the woods to pass the spot, he in 
advance, when he saw the stranger pull a pistol and 
fire at his back. He felt the bullet tear into him, 
reeled and fell from his horse, and was conscious when 
the assassin robbed him and drew his body further 
into the woods. He seemed to see all this, and yet at 
the same time knew that he was dead. His corpse 
was rolled into a hollow and covered with brush, and 
then the murderer went away and left him alone. 

' 'In making an effort to throw off the brush, he 
awoke. His cigar had gone out, and, as near as he 
could calculate, he had been unconscious, as you 
might call it, for about fifteen minutes. He was 
deeply agitated, and it was some time before he could 
convince himself that he had not suffered any injury. 
By-and-by he went to bed and slept soundly, and next 
morning the remembrance of what had happened in 
his vision had almost faded from his mind. 

''He set out on his journey in good spirits, and 
found the road so romantic, and met horsemen going 
to town so often, that he reached the junction of 
the roads without having given a serious thought 
to his vision. 

" Then every circumstance was recalled in the 
most vivid manner. 

"He was joined there by a stranger on a gray 
horse, and man and beast tallied exactly with those 
in the vision. The man did not, however, have the 



A DREAM REALIZED. 135 

look or bearing of an evil-minded person. On the 
contrary, be seemed to be in a jolly mood, and he 
saluted Bronson as frankly as an honest stranger 
would have done. He had no weapons in sight, 
and he soon explained that he was going to the 
village to which Bronson was bound, on business % 
connected with the law. 

" The agent could not help but feel astonished and 
startled at the curious coincidence, but the stranger 
was so talkative and friendly that there was no possi- 
ble excuse to suspect him. Indeed, as if to prove to 
his companion that he meditated no evil, he kept 
a little in advance for the next half hour. Bron- 
son's distrust had entirely vanished, when a turn 
in the road brought an obstruction to view. There 
was a fallen tree across the highway ! This proof 
that every point and circumstance in the vision 
was being unrolled before his eyes, gave the agent 
a great shock. He was behind the stranger, and 
he pulled out his revolver and dropped his hand 
beside the horse to conceal it. 

" 'Well, well V said the man. as he pulled up his 
horse ; ' the tree must have toppled over this morn- 
ing. We'll have to pass around it to the right.' 

" Bronson was on the right. The woods were clear 
of underbrush, and, naturally enough, he should have 
been the first to leave the road, but he waited. 

" * Go ahead, friend/ said the stranger, as if the 
words had been addressed to the horse; the animal 
which the agent bestrode started up. 

"Bronson was scarcely out of the road before he 
turned in his saddle. The stranger had a pistol in 
his right hand. What followed could not be clearly 
related. Bronson slid from the saddle as a bullet 
whizzed past him, and a second later returned the 
fire. Three or four shots were rapidly exchanged, 



186 -i.v INTELLIGENT FORCE* 

and then the would-be murderer, uttering a yell show- 
ing that he had been hit. wheeled his horse to gal- 
lop off. He had not gone ton rods when the beast 

foil under him, and ho kicked his foot from the stir- 
rups and sprang into the woods and was out of sight 
in a moment. The horse had received a bullet in the 
throat and was dead in a few minutes. 

A Young Lady's D renin. — Miss Amelia Edorly, a 
young lady highly endowed, both mentally and physi- 
cally, and free from superstition or inclination to the 
marvelous, while visiting friends one evening shortly 
before her death, related a dream which she had a 
few days previous, which had vividly impressed it- 
self on her mind. She thought she saw herself ready 
for burial, with her parents and friends weeping 
around her. She had no fooling- ; only surprise that 
her body was clothed with a blue dross with yellow 
roses, and she attempted to expostulate at this want 
of taste, hut no one gave attention to her remarks. 
She jested about the dream, and it seemed not to 
make any deep impression : hut ten days after this 
visit she was taken siok and died. She had men- 
tioned her dream only once, and her sieknoss could 
not he referred to mental impression received there- 
by. 

A Warning Voice.— Br. Fisher, of Waterford, Eng- 
land, is authority for the following: 

" Miss Louisa Benn, who lived with her mother in 
Wednesbury, had become desirous of going to Aus- 
tralia : her friends assisted her to means. After she 
had made preparations, she left her home for Lon- 
don, and secured passage on a ship. On the day 
before the sailing of the ship her mother heard a cry 
of. 'Oh, mother." seemingly from the cellar, and in 



AN OBJECTION. 187 

her daughter's voice. She was so alarmed that she 
telegraphed for her daughter to return, which she 
reluctantly did, for she was already on board, and 
her luggage being stored away, could not be given 
her. Her regret vanished when news came that 
the vessel was lost, and with it nearly all the pas- 
sengers." 

An Objection. — Here arises an objection often 
urged against such premonitions. Of an hundred or 
more of passengers, one only is warned, while all the 
others are allowed to go on board and blindly meet 
their fate. If such warning come from God, with 
whom all things are possible, the objection would 
have pertinence, and be unanswerable unless rele- 
gated to the mystery of Godliness. But such warn- 
ings do not come from God, but from spirit intelli- 
gences just above ourselves, departed friends who 
preserve an interest- in those who remain on earth. 
It is not probable that all, or even any considerable 
portion of these intelligences, are able to forecast 
the future, or possess the equally essential ability to 
impress their thoughts on their earthly friends. The 
few who know the events of the future may find 
it impossible to communicate with their friends. 
Hence the rare occurrence of such premonitions, 
and the strange spectacle of only a single individual 
among hundreds receiving intimations of approach- 
ing danger. Thus where the laws and conditions of 
impressibility are understood, it is not anomalous 
that so few are impressed, but this fact confirms the 
theory of sensitiveness. 

Premonitions and presentiments of coming events 
form a numerous class of well attested cases. They 
usually relate directly to the person receiving them, 
and those recorded in a majority of instances refer 



138 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

to sickness or death. It may be supposed that a 
great majority of premonitions received, are not re- 
cognized, or at least recorded. Many by reception 
defeat their fulfillment, quite as' many, probably, as 
bring their fulfillment by being received. When an 
individual has a premonition that he is to die at a 
certain time, and does thus die, it is said the pro- 
phecy so worked on his mind that it killed him at 
the appointed time. Possibly this might happen, 
but it rarely does. Far more often the knowledge 
prepares for the event, and the individual survives 
to point at the prophecy as a failure. Again, the pre • 
sentiment comes with the certainty of a decree of 
fate, and the future is without shadow of turning, 
and inexorable to our efforts or our prayers. 

Abraham Lincoln's Dream. — The following dream 
by Abraham Lincoln is a matter of history, and is 
in harmony with the susceptible nature of that great 
man. He related it to Mrs. Lincoln and others pre- 
sent in the following words: 

"About ten days ago I retired very late. I had 
been up waiting for important dispatches. I could 
not have been long in bed, when I fell into a slumber 
and began to dream. There seemed to be a death- 
like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, 
as if a number of persons were weeping. I thought 
I left my bed and wandered down stairs. There the 
silence was broken by the same sobbing, but the 
mourners were invisible. I went from room to 
room. No living person was in sight, but the same 
mournful sounds met me as I passed along. I was 
puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning 
of all this ? Determined to find out the cause of a 
state of things so mysterious. I kept on until I ar- 
rived at the 'end room/ which I entered. There I 



A LITTLE GIRL'S PREDICTION. 139 

met a sickening surprise. Before me was a cata- 
falque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral 
vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who 
were acting as guards ; and there was a throng of 
people, some gazing mournfully upon this corpse, 
whose face was covered ; others weeping pitifully, 
' Who is dead at the White House ? ' I demanded of 
one of the soldiers. ' The President,' was his answer; 
'he was killed by an assassin !' Then came a loud 
burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from 
my dream. I slept no more that night ; and although 
it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed 
by it ever since." 

This occurred but a short time before the event 
it heralded, which pi nged the nation into grief. 
Had the President given heed to its warning, and 
not been persuaded by his wife, who gave no credit 
to the supernatural, the course of events would have 
been different. Had he heeded the dream it would 
have been brought forward as evidence to prove the 
worthlessness of such visions. 

A Little Girl Predicts Her own Death.— Little 

Maud, three-year-old daughter of George T. Ford, of 
Elmore, Mich., came to her mother one day and said, 
" Maudie is not going to stay; she is going away off 
to be buried up in the cold ground." About a week 
later, she said, "Let Maudie go and ride with you 
to-day, for she will never go again." On the morning 
of the day of her death, she came to her mother and 
said, ' ' Maudie don't feel well. Don't you feel sorry 
for Maudie ? She is going away off where you will 
never see her again." Her mother clasped her to her 
bosom, wondering what she could mean, but was not 
long left in doubt. The child grew seriously ill, and 
later in the day she said, " Good-bye — lift me up — I 



140 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

hear the band playing — I am going now, " and passed 
away. 

Prince Leopold's Dream. — Another instance, im- 
portant in consequence of the noble station of the 
person to whom it relates, is given in the Fortnightly 
Bevieiv, by W. H. Myers : 

" The last time I saw Prince Leopold (being two 
days before he died), he would talk to me about 
death, and said he would like a military funeral. 

" Finally I asked, 'why do you talk in this morose 
manner ? ' As he was about to answer, he was called 
away and said, 'I will tell you later/ I never saw 
him to speak to again, but he finished his answer to 
me to a lady, and said : ' Two nights now, Princess 
Alice has appeared to me in my dreams, and says 
she is quite happy and wants me to come and join 
her ; that is what makes me so very thoughtful.' 

"I take this to be a sign of his approaching removal 
to the world of spirits, in which, as a member of a 
Spiritualistic family, he has been, from his earliest 
youth, an implicit believer, thus illustrating the truth 
of the observation, that, 'Signs are vouchsafed to 
the believing, now, as of old. " ' 

Another Case. — Miss Mary Paine, when on her way 
to visit some friends in Gainesville, Ga., on passing 
the Mars Hill Graveyard, ordered her driver to stop 
the team, which he did. Then she exacted a promise 
from him that he would bring her back and bury 
her by the side of her sister Jane. " For, " said she, 
"I shall never come back alive. I shall die away 
from home, and I want you to promise to bring me 
back for burial." To this declaration she clung, nor 
would she be persuaded that, as she was in good 
health she would have a pleasant visit and return 



THE INTERIOR IMPRESSION, 141 

home happy. Before three weeks had passed she 
died of a congestive chill, at her friend's house in 
Gainesville, and as she had requested, was brought 
back to Mars Hill and buried by the side of her dear 
sister. 

Dr. H , who is of exceedingly skeptical or- 
ganization, said that he once had an experience 
which baffled his powers of explanation, and caused 
him to doubt his materialistic views. He had been 
called to a distant farm-house on an intensely dark 
and stormy night to visit a patient. There was a 
stream with wide marshy borders, across which a 
narrow causeway had been constructed, barely wide 
enough for carriages to pass. As he drove onto one 
end of this narrow way, suddenly there came the 
thought that he would meet a runaway team, and his 
horse and carriage be overturned into the morass. 
At that time of night this was wholly improbable ; 
but the thought came to him instantly with all its 
contingencies. ' ' If I should meet a team, what shall 
I do ? " he asked himself. Then he thought there 
was one place wider than the rest, and he answered, 
"I would reach that place and get as far out of the 
way as possible." " Get there, then ; get there," was 
the urgent impression. He involuntarily hurried 
his horse, reached the place, and, driving to the very 
edge, drew rein. He was in a tremor of nervous 
excitement, yet had seen nor heard nothing to ex- 
cite him more than the interior impression. But he 
soon found his haste had not been in vain. He 
heard the rattle of wheels and clatter of hoofs, as 
a runaway team struck the further end of the cause- 
way, and in a moment they swept past him. Had 
they met him unprepared, he certainly would have 
met with a serious, if not fatal, accident. This in- 
telligence which saw the approaching team and the 



142 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE. 

great danger in which Dr. H. would be placed, was 
independent of his mind, for it brought a knowledge 
that mind did not, nor could not know until re- 
vealed by some foreign power. Whence came the 
premonition, the thoughtful care ? Not out of the 
air. It was from an intelligent, individualized en- 
tity above and beyond physical existence; and all 
theories which leave out this element fall short of 
covering the multitudinous facts which unite and 
bind them together in a harmonious whole. 

Seen at His Funeral. — Dr. John E. Purdon, now 
of Valley Head, Ala. , is authority for the following 
narrative, which records the appearance of a soldier 
soon after his death, and may be taken as evidence 
of the sensitiveness on one side, and of the reality 
of the existence of the appearance on the other: 

"In the year 1872, while in charge of the con- 
valescent hospital, Sandown, Isle of Wight, I re- 
turned from a short visit to London, bringing with 
me for change and rest Miss Florence Cook, who 
afterwards became so celebrated a medium. On the 
evening of my return home, I took a walk with Miss 
Cook along the cliffs towards Shanklin. During the 
walk she drew my attention to a soldier who seemed 
to her to be behaving in a curious way, turning 
round and staring at me, and omitting the usual 
military salute which she had noticed the other men 
give as they passed by. As I could see no one at 
the time my curiosity was excited, and when she 
said the man had passed a stile just in front of us, 
I crossed over and looked carefully about. No sol- 
dier was in sight ; on one side was an open field ; on 
the other, perpendicular cliffs. I asked a country 
man at work in the field if he had seen a soldier pass 
just before I appeared, but he had not. 



APPEARANCE AFTER DEATH. 143 

" On my return from town I found that a certain 
chronic patient who had been a long time in the hos- 
pital, and on whom I had performed a minor surgical 
operation some time before, had died of pulmonary 
consumption. 

" Miss Cook and another young lady on a visit to 
my wife, never having seen a military funeral, per- 
suaded her to take them to a cross-road, where they 
would see the troops pass without being seen them- 
selves. As we marched past, the coffin being carried 
on a gun-carriage, Miss Cook said to my wife, ' Why 
is the little man in front dressed differently from the 
other soldier ?' My wife answered that she could not 
see any one in front, nor could the other girl either. 
Miss Cook then said, ' Why does he not wear a big 
hat like the others ? He has on a small cap and is 
holding his head down.' They then returned home, 
and the funeral party passed on to the graveyard 
which was two miles from the hospital. Just after 
the firing party had fallen in to march home, Hospital 
Sergeant Malandine came up to me in the graveyard 
and said : ' Private Edwards reports sick, sir, and 
asks permission to return by train.' I asked what 
was the matter, and the sergeant answered that Ed- 
wards had had a great fright from seeing the man 
we were burying looking down into his own grave 
at the coffin before it was covered by the clay ! " 

Appearance After Death. — Light, a journal that, 
exercises great discretion in the facts it publishes,' 
vouches for the following appearance coincident 
with death, received from Mr. F. J. Teall : 

"In the year 1884 my son Walter was serving in 
the Soudan, in the 3d King's Royal Rifles. The last 
we heard from him was a letter informing us that 
he expected to return to England about Christmas 



144 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE, 

time. On October 24th I returned homo in the 
evening, and noticing my wife Looking very white, 
I said, 'What is the matter with yon?' She said 
she had seen Walter, and lie had stooped down to 
kiss her, but, owing to her starting, he was gone; so 
she did not receive the kiss. Be was in his regi- 
mentals, and she thought he had come on furlough, 
to take her by surprise, knowing the back way; but 
when she saw be was gone and the door not open, 
she became dreadfully frightened. My son Fred- 
erick and daughters Selina and Nellie were in the 
room, but none of them saw Walter; only Fred 
heard his mother scream, 'Oh!' and asked her what 
was the matter. 

' k I thought, having heard many tales of this kind, 
that 1 would jot it down, so I put the date on a slip 
of paper. After that we had a letter from the lady 
muse of the Ramleh Hospital, in Egypt, to say that 
the poor hoy had suffered a third relapse of enteric 
fever. They thought that he would have pulled 
through, but he was taken. When we got the letter 
it was a week after he died ; but the date when the 
letter was written corresponded with the day Wal- 
ter appeared, which was on October 84th, L884. My 
wife never got oxcv the shock, but brooded over 
it, and finally died April 89th, 1.886, of mental de- 
rangement." 

Fore warning. -r- Miss Lena Harman, as reported in 
the Globe-Demc&rat, is authority t'ov a most in- 
structive narrative of ghastly interference in the 
affairs o( men, which forms another link in the 
chain of evidence showing that there is a spirit- 
world interested in the events oi' this. Miss Bar- 
man was a warm friend of Mrs. Lena Reich, who 
was foully murdered by her husband in New York. 



FORE W A RNWG. 145 

She had not seen her for several months prior to her 
death, but the last time she met her, Mrs. Reich told 
her a pitiful story of her husband's abuse, and said 
she ought not to have married him for she had been 
forewarned. She bad been obliged to have him 
bound over to keep the peace, and knew he would 
yet kill her. The warning came before she was 
married, even before their engagement. In her 
own words it happened this way. "Adolph had 
been courting me for some time, and I knew that 
I loved him. One night, a terrible dark, storm- 
ing winter night, he told me that he loved me, 
and offered himself to me. I acknowledged that I 
was not indifferent to him, but asked a few days 
to think over the matter and consult my friends. 
Adolph did not like this delay, and tried to reason me 
out of it, but I was firm and carried my point. Well, 
we sat up very late that night together, no one else 
but ourselves being in the room. When he finally 
left it was past midnight, and the weather was very 
cold, so I fixed up the fire to make me a cup of tea to 
quiet my nerves, and warm me up before going to 
bed. I was a little sorry I had been so positive to 
Adolph about the time, as I loved him and I thought 
I might as well say yes, any way, so that he would 
have gone home so much happier. 

" As I poured out my cup of tea I said aloud to my- 
self, 'Yes, I love Adolph.' Just then I heard a noise 
on the stairs, and, thinking some one was going by 
my door, I turned off the gas, because I did not want 
any one to know I was keeping such late hours. As 
the fire in the stove gave out a ruddy light, and the 
half-darkness of the room seemed so peaceful, and 
suited my mood of mind so well, I did not light the 
gas again, but sat and sipped my tea in the darkness, 
saying little things to myself aloud. Suddenly, how- 



146 AN INTELLIGENT FORCE, 

ever, I heard a slight noise behind me, and at the 
same time I heard a church clock, strike the hour of 
one. Well, I looked around without a thought of 
anything strange, and saw my Ernest, to whom I 
had been previously engaged, and who died before 
the ceremony, almost at the altar. He was dressed 
in the same clothes as when I saw him last — his 
wedding suit— for we were going to our wedding 
when he died of heart disease. 

" I shrieked and tried to fly from my room, but he 
spoke : c Do not move, Lena ; I will not harm you. 
I come because I love you, and because I pity you. 
Lena, if you marry Adolph Reich you will lead the 
life of a dog. He will be cruel and jealous, and un- 
reasonable, and, worse than all, he will murder you 
in the end. Yes, he will murder you ! Stay ! I see 
the scene now! He grasps your hair; he holds a 
sharp carving knife in the other hand ; you reach out 
for the knife and seize it, when, with a terrible oath, 
he draws the keen blade out of your grasp, and al- 
most severs your fingers in doing so ! Oh ! he has 
you down on the bed; he draws the knife; you 
struggle and scream. He strikes the blade into your 
neck! — your beautiful neck; you struggle more 
violently and escape. With the blood spurting from 
your wound, you run from the room and fall in the 
hall; and the villian escapes, carrying the knife 
with him ! Oh, terrible ! terrible ! ■ Then there was 
a silence; Ernest said no more for some minutes, 
and I was too much horrified to speak ; but again 
he said : ' Lena, I love you as much as I ever did, 
and it won't be long now before you join me here, 
and we shall be happy again. Oh, do not marry 
Reich, as you value your life and soul ! Farewell ! 
God keep you ! ' and he was gone ! ; ' 

The warning was fulfilled to the letter. After the 



EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL INFLUENCES. 147 

infliction of the terrible wound which caused her 
death ; he had crawled out of her room, and fell in 
the hall from the loss of blood. How many similar 
warnings pass unheeded, and yet how greatly might 
the recipients be benefited by heeding them ! 



Effects of Physical Influences on the 
Sensitive. 



Individuals who are influenced to an unusual ex- 
tent by their surroundings, are regarded as nervous, 
— a name covering a multitude of ills for which no 
other term is at command. A cat entering the room, 
however stealthily, in some awakes the most dis- 
agreeable feelings. Another is so sensitive to the 
electric state of the weather as to presage the com- 
ing storm several hours or days in advance. Sun- 
day is so called because of its supposed connection 
with the phases of the moon. The superstitious 
observation of the Signs arises from the dull under- 
standing or ignorance of this influence. That man 
is a magnet, and has polarity corresponding to that 
of the earth, is a plausible conjecture, which receives 
confirmation by the influence of the earth currents 
on many forms of disease. Some patients are so ex- 
ceedingly sensitive that they can lie at ease in no 
other position than with their heads to the north; 
and it has been argued that if such position is best 
for the sensitive it is for all. 

More especially is the influence of physical forces 
seen when death occurs after a lingering disease, 



148 EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL INFLUENCES. 

which, by reducing the bodily strength, makes that 
of the spirit more susceptible. 

" He's going out with the tide/' is the common 
expression of all the rough coastwise people. It may 
be called a superstition of sea-faring races ; but it is 
a fact that for some inscrutable reason the old, sick 
and infirm more often die at the ebb-tide than when 
the tide is rising. A poet beautifully expresses this 
belief : 

" When the tide goes out he will pass away, 
Pray for a sours serene release ! 
That the weary spirit may rest in peace, 
When the tide goes out." 

A physician on the Connecticut coast, who had 
made special observations, said: "for more than 
thirty years I have lived and observed among the 
rough, hardy souls hereabout ; and for more than 
fifty my father before me gathered facts and wisdom 
from practice. I have stood by hundreds of death- 
beds of fishermen and farmers, old and young, dur- 
ing the last quarter of a century ; but I can hardly 
recall a single instance of a person dying of disease, 
who did not pass away while the tide was ebbing. It 
is a fact that in critical cases I never feel concerned 
to leave a patient for an hour or two when the tide 
is coming in ; but when it is receding, and particu- 
larly in the latter stages of the ebb, I stay by, if I 
can, till the turn comes. You'll scarcely credit it, 
but the daily record of the tides is the most import- 
ant part of the almanac in my practice. If a patient 
who is very low lives to see the current turn from 
ebb to flow, I know the case is safe till the ebb sets 
in again." 

" When the tide comes in death waits for dole, 
When the tide ebbs it takes a soul." 



GOING OUT WITH THE TIDE, 149 

Francis Gerry Fairchild says that during five 
years he noted the hour and minute of ninety -three 
demises, and of these all but four (wno died of acci- 
dents) went out*with the ebb of the tide. In his own 
words: "I who have sat with my fingers on the wrist 
of many a feeble patient, and noticed the pulse rise 
and strengthen, or sink and vanish, with the turn- 
ing of the tide, know that it is fact." 

Of twenty-one cases of death registered on the sea 
coast of Long Island at Orient, by Capt. D. B. Ed- 
wards, I find, by careful examination, that with only 
one exception, the aged, or those who had been suf- 
fering from long sickness, died at the ebb of the tide. 
These cases were taken as they came, and afford an 
average that may be depended upon. 

Not that the coming and going of the ocean wave as 
it rolls round the world has special influence. The 
cause is more profound, and blended with the force 
of gravitation. Not only is the ocean agitated and 
piled up beneath the moon ; the deeper and more 
elastic aerial sea is more strongly fluctuated, and 
the electric and magnetic conditions change with 
certain periodicity. The maximum of positive force 
is attained at high tide, constantly increasing as the 
tide comes in, and then recedes to the zero of nega- 
tiveness with its outgoing. With the flood of water, 
and higher pressure of atmosphere, the forces of 
life are stimulated by the increasing positiveness. 
When these stimulants withdraw, the tide runs to 
the negative pole, and a soul ebbs from the mortal 
shore. Man is sensitive to the influences of the sun 
and moon, and to the stars. 

The influence of the moon in cases of lunacy has 
been observed from ancient times, and a lunar 
month measures the cycle of changes in most cases 
of madness. 



150 EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL INFLUENCES. 

During" health these subtle changes are not felt, or 
too feebly to be remarked. It is during sickness, 
when the physical energies are so enfeebled that 
slight forces turn the balance for .or against, that 
the most palpable effects are produced. There are 
rnoon-tides and sun-tides in the ocean and in the air. 
Sometimes these augment, at others depress each 
other. The magnetic disturbances are much greater 
at times than others ; hence the subject is compli- 
cated ; but when investigated it will be shown that 
there is co-operation between vital force and the 
energies of nature. 

A spirit is a harp attuned to respond to the touch 
of myriad forces. It is placed in the center of these 
multitudinous energies, coming in from every direc- 
tion. It is sensitive to the touch of the sun, the 
moon and the planets, and to that of the farthest 
star that twinkles on the verge of the Milky Way ; 
not in the sense of astrology, but in as faithful a 
manner. If the magnetic needle trembles because of 
a spot in the sun ; if the magnetic currents of the 
earth are disturbed by activity of the solar disc, can 
we for a moment doubt but the more delicately 
ethereal spiritual perception will feel such disturb- 
ances ? The sweet influence of the Pleiades has 
more than poetic meaning, and the cold light of the 
moon brings on its beams the breath of love. 

It is well known that many diseases are aggra- 
vated by the approach of night, while others are 
most severe during the day. All nervous pains be- 
come intensified at the approach of night — a fact ad- 
mitted, but referred by material science to the imagi- 
nation, the fancy having free reign during the silent 
hours of darkness. During the day, the half of the 
earth illuminated is positive to the other unillumi- 
nated hemisphere. Hence the sensations of evening 



UNCONSCIOUS SENSITIVENESS. 151 

are different from those of morning. We have en- 
joyed the light and been positive during the day ; 
when night advances, we become passive in the en- 
veloping darkness, and enter a state twin sister to 
death, to arise in the morning again to meet the 
positive day. 

Sleep during the night is more restoring than dur- 
ing the day — a distinction recognized by animals 
and plants. Night is no more terrible than day, yet 
the mind, oppressed by the negative condition then 
imposed on all things, peoples it with fancies. The 
hour of midnight is the established season for 
ghostly appearances. He who boldly walks along 
the churchyard path at noonday, would fain whistle 
to keep his courage up at the hour of midnight. 
Even Heeckel, the great naturalist, confesses that as 
the evening fell on him, while alone on the extreme 
point of Ceylon, and the shadows deepened on the 
weird forest and lonely sea, an " uncanny" feeling 
crept over him. 

And the soul moves in the circle of the seasons ; 
not only has human life its Spring, Summer, Autumn, 
and Winter ; in the long three score years and ten, it 
swings through this circle with each succeeding pro- 
cession of seasons, and experiences the changing 
impressions they so rapidly bring. 



Unconscious Sensitiveness. 



Silence and Receptivity. — I sit down with the 
friend of my heart, and neither speak a word ; we 
visit in close communion of souls, in silence; spoken 
words would be only jarring discord. The shallow 



152 UNCONSCIOUS SENSITIVENESS. 

mind is supplied with a wind of words : like a diction- 
ary he is all words, but without a thought. The high- 
est thought, the most profound feelings, are beyond 
the sphere of speech. 

The restless wind is ever sighing; the restless, 
unbalanced soul is ever chattering its half-formed 
thoughts. The shallow brook splashes and dashes 
over its bed with noisy tongue; the deep river flows 
onward without a ripple on its broad surface to tell 
of its tremendous power. 

If we would learn of nature we must retire to her 
solitudes and let no one intrude. The dearest and 
nearest may draw with well meaning hands an 
opaque vail between us and the sun. In the solitude 
of the forest, by the shores of the sullen sea, and in 
the depths of star-lit night, we rest as dwarfs, over- 
powered by the stupendous elements, yet the center 
of all forces and phenomena. We are in the vortex 
of creative energies, and if we silently question, the 
answers fall as soon as our minds are receptive to 
them. In its adoration of the boundless, the soul 
mirrors its own infinitude. The shoreless expanse 
of sea, with sky and wave blending, lost in mist, in 
the never-reached horizon ; the depths of stars, be- 
yond and beyond, in vistas leading out into absolute 
void, beyond all created things — to such the soul 
acknowledges kinship, and in them finds its satis- 
faction. The thoughts of the stars are untongued, 
but they vibrate across the limitless ether, and are 
eloquent to the receptive mind. 

Immeasurably more needful of receptivity born of 
silence, is the contact with the infinite realm of spirit. 
The ocean of being, invisible, is before us. We may 
not dictate, nor with blatant cry make demands. 
We shall be grateful for a grain of manna from the 
heavenly skies ; we may gather a full repast. As 



THE EDUCATION OF RECEPTIVITY. 153 

spiritual beings, into the warp and woof of whose 
existence enter the strands of immortal life, we are 
capable of comprehending- the laws of this unseen, 
and heretofore unknown universe. As suns are puls- 
ating centers of light, spiritual beings are pulsating 
centers of thought, and as light waves go out cir- 
cling until lost on the remotest coast line of the uni- 
verse, so thought-waves go out from the thinking 
mind, and are caught Up by all minds. receptive to 
them. 

By the sea, the soul sees the inner world expressed 
by a series of changing pictures. The ships sailing 
from harbor, with all their white sails set, and bent 
to the breeze which wafts them into the gray mist 
until lost to view, express the voyage of human be- 
ings. The white birds, with flapping wings, are the 
purposeless spirits of the air. The stars, what con- 
solation they have given the wretched in long ages 
of suffering, by their eternal placidity, their quiet- 
ude from the feverish follies which we know intui- 
tively belong to a lower life. 

The truly receptive mind is least alone when alone. 
Then it becomes the headland against which beat 
the waves of thought from every thinking being in 
the universe. Like the telegraph receiver, it picks 
out the thoughts to which it is sensitive, and the 
others go on to those receptive to them. It thus be- 
comes apparent that there can be an education super- 
ior to all others; the education of receptivity, or sensi- 
tiveness to the thought atmosphere or psychic-ether. 
Not that this can take the place of the ordinary 
training of the faculties, for their training, rudely 
performed as it is, often leads to a high sensitive- 
ness ; more often leads away from it. The poet is 
most sensitive to poetic thought, and in this sense is 
a medium, not only for individual poets, but, per- 



154 UNCONSCIOUS SENSITIVENESS. 

haps, unconsciously, for the inseparable thoughts of 
all. The truly great statesman receives influx from 
the United Congress of all past leaders. Through 
the sensitive preacher, all preachers of the past find 
tongue. The man of science, if successful in re- 
search, may be praised for skill and faithfulness, but 
beyond these qualities are the impressions descend- 
ing from all who think or ever have thought on their 
special subjects. There is a sensitiveness of organ- 
ization, and not of culture, which makes of the pos- 
sessor a mouth-piece, an instrument, such as it is. 
There is a sensitiveness, better here called recep- 
tivity, which comes of right culture, and is the 
highest form of mediumship, though its possessor 
may be wholly unconscious of his gift. ". 

Receptivity and Greatness. — Here and there are 
those who by organization are sensitive and ready 
instruments to bless the world with the light of 
higher spheres. There have been many in the past 
fifty years. Centuries have gone by and not one 
of these barren — centuries during which man re- 
mained stationary or retrograded into dense ignor- 
ance. 

As mountain peaks catch the light of morning 
when all the valleys and plains below are wrapped 
in darkness, so these sensitives arise into the atmos- 
phere of spirit, and Tmthe their foreheads in its 
glory. 

Who should be more sensitive to the urgencies of 
a threatened state than he who has the responsibili- 
ties of government ? Whom would the departed 
statesman, who, loving his country, seek to im- 
press, if not the ones in power, who could make 
such impressions available ? But those in power 
may not be impressible, and this is most unfortuate 



RECEPTIVITY AND GREATNESS. 155 

for the state. They may be, and then it can be truth- 
fully said that the forces of heaven fight its battles. 

Such an one was Lincoln. His receptive mind 
responded to the thought waves of the psychic at- 
mosphere, and he became the center of a thought- 
vortex — the concentration of unnumbered intelli- 
gences — with the holy spiritual fervor of the sage 
and prophet. Feeling himself called to a mighty 
task, and consecrated to its accomplishment, his 
great and earnest soul responded to the breath of 
inspiration. He was misunderstood by men because 
he acted from motives they could not comprehend, 
and which were uncomprehended by himself; but 
during the years of darkness, anxiety and care, the 
cabinet on which he relied was not the executive 
officers, but one formed of those Fathers of the Re- 
public, who, on the hour of its birth, gave its flag 
to the breezes of heaven. He failed at times ; dis- 
asters came, representing the periods when the 
clouds obscured the clear light of inspiration. He 
disregarded the impressions of impending danger, 
and disobedience sealed the record of his labors 
with his blood ! 

Then in invention, the contrivances by which the 
elements are harnessed and become williDg servants, 
we take one man as an illustration. A poor unedu- 
cated country lad, with a simple knowledge of 
telegraphy sufficient to send messages over the 
wires, that is all — no college learning, no one to 
assist, to direct, to advise. He soon entered a field 
where no mortal could advise, where no mortal had 
been or knew aught to advise him. He became 
sensitive, and the secret chambers of the lightning 
were unlocked to him. What to other men who 
had devoted a life-time of study was obscure and 
mysterious, became to him the ABC to higher read- 



156 UNCONSCIOUS SENSITIVENESS. 

ings. He sent his voice across the continent, he 
recorded the sounds so that the instrument would 
in all after years give us back the tones of those we 
love; he prolonged the lightning's lurid flash into 
a continuous blaze, and converted night into day; 
he made the current leap from the wire to the 
passing train and over an intangible wire from ship 
to ship, across leagues of sea. 

True Inspiration. — Ole Bull. — What is meant by 
the oft-repeated assertion that great and exceptional 
persons are inspired ? More especially in music and 
poetry is the influx from some foreign source dis- 
tinctly marked. Ole Bull, the king of all violin 
players, was, by his own confession, subject to an 
influence beyond himself. When a boy, he was 
attempting, unaided, to translate into musical 
sounds the splendor of his ideal, a " voice " en- 
couraged him constantly with "Bravo!" which he 
accepted as a sign that he was doing well. Unlike 
Socrates' "demon," instead of being always the 
same, it was that of many celebrated musicians. On 
one occasion, the voice of Handel murmured in his 
ear after a rendition of that composer's " Hallelujah 
Chorus," " Only shadow music sung by shadows." 
"My soul asked, 'Where, then, is the substance, 
Master?'" "In my world," tho voice replied, 
"where alone all things are real, and music is 
the speech." 

Paganini. — Of Paganini it was said that he not 
only enchanted his listeners, but played as one en- 
chanted, losing consciousness, and throughout his 
performances remained as one entranced. So real 
were musical conceptions flashed on his mind, that 
they became objective, and danced before him in 
wild expression of rythmic motion. 



BLIND TOM. HANDEL. 157 

How far the ecstacy of all true musicians may 
account for their super-normal efforts, depends on 
the meaning accepted of ecstacy. It really is a state 
of sensitiveness to harmonious sounds, which at its 
best differs little from the most exalted form of 
clairvoyance, or, perhaps better, clair-audience. 

Blind Tom. — All have heard of Blind Tom, an 
idiotic negro, uncouth, untaught, yet who was able 
to play the most intricate music, in a manner only 
attainable to others by years of study and practice. 
His improvisations were the wonder and delight of 
the listeners, and were dashed off with the fingers 
of what might truly have been regarded as an au- 
tomaton. By what method could his astonishing 
facility of execution, delicacy of expression, and 
masterly touch be explained ? He was never taught 
a lesson in music, was incapable of forming a con- 
tinuous train of thought ; yet no conservatory ever 
graduated a superior performer. We are forced 
to accept one of two conclusions: either that he was 
of himself superior to any one in musical ability, or 
that he derived this gift from an outside source. 
The first, on the face of it, appears an absurdity. 
He was no more the cause of the music he pro- 
duced than was the piano on which he played. Both 
were instruments, he standing between the force 
and its effect. « 

Handel. — In the sphere of sacred music, perhaps 
Handel stands without a peer. So far above the 
ordinary level is his sublime work, that he receives 
not his full mead of praise ; for we applaud most 
that which echoes some part of ourselves, and with 
his strains we are bowed in humility and awe. In 
twenty-three days he produced "The Messiah," a 



158 • UNCONSCIOUS SENSITIVENESS. 

work which, for vastness of conception and exqui- 
site finish, is the grandest and most perfect choral 
work the world has ever known. He belonged to 
no school, has no imitators, for he is too far removed 
for imitation to be attempted. Well has it been 
said that the power of such souls baffles criticism. 
That they tower so far above the common level, and 
possess such exceptional mental and moral powers, 
leads to the supposition that they touch a thought- 
sphere not touched by those less sensitively en- 
dowed. 

Beecher. — This great preacher, who left Plymouth 
pulpit vacant, a vacancy which never can be filled, 
is a fine illustration of these views. 

The man and his inspiration were constantly 
struggling for mastery. He would advance, on the 
tide of that inspiration, to the very brink of the 
precipice of heterodoxy ; his large heart and enthu- 
siasm carrying him and his hearers far beyond the 
limits of their narrow creeds, and then recovering 
himself he would recoil, restate, explain and hedge 
against the severity of the criticism provoked. But 
constantly he gained ground, and carried his hear- 
ers with him. He never retreated quite as far as 
he advanced, and in later years the inspiring power 
had educated the man to its level, and he bravely 
and boldly stood by his words. For an entire gener- 
ation he stood in his pulpit, a divine oracle, every 
Sunday having an audience of the entire country, 
and as an elevating, educating power, was immeasur- 
able. He broke the fetters from the slave ; he broke 
the fetters of superstition from millions, more bonds- 
men than the negro slave. If you were to gather 
up all that he has written it would make a library 
of itself, and yet there is little of all that he has 



A MIGHTY INFLUENCE. 159 

written or spoken that has permanent value, or will 
endure. Its value consisted not in its enduring qual- 
ities; rather in its being tentative; steps leading 
upward, and of no use after once being passed over. 
He did not, he could not, preach the ultimate truth. 
The laity, as a conservative force, restrained him. 
Like an eagle burdened with a great weight, he 
carried his church and the world forward, and with 
every new wave of inspiration the burden grew 
lighter, but he never was quite free. 

The limitation of the individual always stands in 
the path of perfect inspiration. He was forced to 
speak after the forms of the creeds and beliefs which 
he inherited, and believed by those he would in- 
struct. Those beliefs were perishing, and his modi- 
fications did not quite grasp the whole truth, and 
hence must disappear. But through him a mighty 
influence was exerted ; not such as may be likened 
to the avalanche which plunges down the mountain, 
but like the breath of spring, melting the snow and 
ice of winter, warming the indurated soil, and mak- 
ing possible the bursting forth of flowers, the pro- 
phecies of autumn fruitage. 

It is remarkable that few writers have given the 
world more than one master-piece, and often a 
single short poem, out of a mass of composition, is 
all that remains of permanent value. Gray's " Ele- 
gy " and " Sweet Home " are examples. The genius 
which could write these wonderful poems ought to 
have been able to write others equally perfect ; yet 
only once did the authors touch the pure fount of in- 
spiration. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in such a moment 
wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Kepublic," which, 
unlike anything ever before written, and unlike 
anything else she ever wrote, became the march- 
ing song of a nation along the pathway of justice. 



160 UNCONSCIOUS SENSITIVENESS. 

Mrs. Harriet Beeclier Stowe wrote before and 
after the production of " Uncle Tom's Cabin, " works 
of some merit, but nothing that approached the won- 
derful story that did more to arouse the nation to the 
wrongs of slavery than all other influences combined. 
According to her own words, she composed in a 
state in which she was overwhelmed with the subject 
and forced to write as she did. 

Dickens entered the same state, and with such dis- 
tinctness were his characters brought before him, that 
he heard their voices, and his dialogues were the 
work of a reporter rather than of a composer. 

Bunyan. — Perhaps no book ever exerted a greater 
influence than "Pilgrim's Progress," written by one 
who in his youth was wild and godless, a tramping 
tinker and rough soldier, uneducated and unversed 
in literary invention. He possessed in a prominent 
degree the sensitive temperament, as his portrait 
shows, and a fine mental endowment, however un- 
cultivated it might have been. So long as Bunyan 
was a part of the jostling world, he was like other 
men. His sensitiveness could only be made valu- 
able by isolation, and that came to him in an un- 
looked for manner by his incarceration in jail. 
There his spirit gained freedom. It became sus- 
ceptible to the thoughts of another sphere, and he 
wrote that remarkable book, which has pleased and 
strengthened millions of struggling souls. After- 
wards, when liberated, he became one of the fanat- 
ics among whom he was cast, and his writings and 
speech were of no value, except as they faintly 
echoed what he had written in his "Pilgrim." Once 
only had the conditions essential to sensitiveness been 
his, and then it was forced upon him, and the result 



GREAT LEADERS IN HISTORY. 161 

was one book of value, and no more. The success 
of that book destroyed the conditions for the recep- 
tion of anything as pure, bringing around him the 
jarring conflict of religious fanaticism. 

Tennyson. — The sensitive condition of Tennyson 
has been graphically described by himself, in words 
which leave no misunderstanding. In a letter writ- 
ten in 1874 to a friend, he says: " I have never had 
any revelation through anesthetics, but a kind of 
waking trance (this for want of a better term) I 
have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I 
have been all alone. This has often come upon me 
through repeating my own name to myself silently 
till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the 
consciousness of the individuality, the individuality 
itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into bound- 
less being ; and this is not a composed state, but the 
clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, 
utterly beyond words, where Death was an almost 
laughable impossibility, the loss of personality, (if 
so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true 
life. " I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have 
I n<5t said the state was utterly beyond words ?" 

Illustrations to an unlimited extent might be drawn 
from the lives of authors, artists, inventors, statesmen 
and warriors, in confirmation of the views expressed. 

In fact, scarcely a single one of all the brilliant 
names that head the list on the scroll of fame but 
might be taken as an example. 

The Great LeatTers in history, statesmanship, war, 
literature, the arts, in science and in invention, 
few in number, appear like centers on whom the 
thoughts of their time converge, and from whom 
they are radiated. They are moved by forces beyond 



162 UNCONSCIOUS SENSITIVENESS. 

themselves, and plan wiser than they know. Na- 
poleon schemed for his own aggrandizement, but 
above him was a power which directed his efforts. 
The art of war was an open book to him, and his 
tactics, the fresh product of his teeming brain, were 
a constant surprise and menace to his enemies. 
Until his mission was accomplished he was invinci- 
ble. When he transcended that, which was to break 
down the absurd distinctions of feudalism, and make 
the serf a man, and in arrogant pride looked on the 
nations as his prey, the conditions of his receptivity 
were destroyed and his defeat assured. 

These great minds have no ancestral lineage, they 
rarely transmit their talent to their offspring. For a 
brief moment, that of their great achievement, they 
gain the heights never before reached, and not again 
to be reached by their posterity. 

Concentration. — It has been said that great con- 
centration of mind — the ability to exclude all objects 
and subjects except the one under consideration — is 
the prime factor of genius, and an adequate explana- 
tion of its achievements. In other words, concentra- 
tion is another name for sensitiveness. What is con- 
centration ? Is it not a mental state in which one idea, a 
group of ideas, dominate ; and where is the difference 
between this state and the hypnotic ? Is it not a con- 
dition of exceeding sensitiveness to ideas related to 
the dominating ? There really is slight distinguish- 
ing difference between the concentration of writer, 
speaker, or inventor, and the mesmeric, or hypnotic 
state of the sensitive. All the difference observable 
is from the side on which the subject is approached. 

This concentration has been called attention to by 
some authors, who would make genius itself de- 
pendent entirely on attention, which Buff on speaks 



CONCENTRATION OF THOUGHT. 163 

of as protracted patience. The mind that can take 
hold of the thread of a subject, and hold fast to it in 
all its intricacies to the end, is enabled to do so by 
superior attention. Concentration is more expres- 
sive, and under whatever name, the same mental 
state is designated. The profound student always 
falls into it when absorbed in his work, and becomes 
"absent-minded," which is an expression commonly 
used to explain one of the most inexplicable mental 
states. When under control of the will, such con- 
centration of mental power becomes priceless to its 
possessor. It is similar to the hypnotic state, with 
none of its disadvantages, and removed to a higher 
plane. The mind in this highly sensitive condition 
is impressible to the thought waves in the psychic- 
ether. On the other hand, when this concentration 
or attention is not controllable by the will, the condi- 
tion of the unfortunate individual is most deplorable. 
He is lost in reverie, a dreamy, misty state of mind 
which unfits him for the duties of practical life. The 
difference is that between forgetfulness of duty, 
which has been the butt of endless ridicule by the 
world and of burlesque on the stage, and the reaches 
of thought attained by the philosopher, and the divine 
songs of the poet. The first essential requisite of 
profound thought is abstraction from the distractions 
of all matters except the one in hand. Ability to 
thus concentrate the mind at pleasure may be in- 
herited or the product of education. In fact, correct 
education may be said to consist mainly in the con- 
trol of the attention, and the ability to concentrate 
the mind on the one subject presented. 

The higher education of the future will recognize 
and give prominence to the cultivation of this hither- 
to ignored faculty. 

It is one of the possibilities of the future to encour- 



164 zmrcoirscrotrs smsiTiVEwms. 

age the culture of the sensitive faculty, and the re- 
sults wi 1 be far more wonderful in normal education 
than now arises from what Seems abnormal, and the 
product of chance. 

Sensitiveness, as has been shown in the preceding 
pages, is possessed by all in greater or less degree, and 
may be cultivated like any other mental quality. As 
its laws and conditions are more thoroughly under- 
stood and its inestimable value realized, it will be- 
come a part of all substantial educational training. 

The Extension of this Theory into the Life Be- 
yond. — This theory, without calling to its aid spiritual 
beings, marks out the laws by which such beings may 
control the sensitive and become cognizant of the 
thoughts of each other. Man being a spirit, limited 
by a physical body, through the sensitive state, under 
certain conditions, he breaks away from his limita- 
tions and feels the waves of thought created by 
others through the psychic-ether. 

When freed from the physical body the spirit must 
possess the same power in larger degree and impress 
its thoughts on the sensitive in the same manner. 
Sensitive beyond mortal conception in its most ex- 
alted state, it is in connection with all spiritual in- 
telligences, and a converging and diverging center 
of telegraphic communication. As it advances in this 
sensitiveness, distance becomes a less and less factor, 
until eliminated, and a thought sent forth wings 
its way until it meets the one for whom it was in- 
tended. 

Thus, what has been made the toy of a leisure hour, 
the imperfect attempts at thought-reading, mesmeric 
control of the will, and the mystery of communion 
of minds sympathetic, are really the crude manifes- 
tations of an undeveloped faculty, which, after the 



PRAYER. 165 

evolution wrought by death, becomes the glory of 
spirit-existence. 



Prayer in the Light of Sensitiveness 
and Thought Waves. 



When President Garfield was lying tortured by 
the wound which caused his death, the prayers of a 
whole nation arose as one united voice for his re- 
covery. From sixty thousand pulpits petitions to 
the throne of grace ascended. There were days set 
apart for united appeal to God. He was eminent in 
the church as in war and politics, and if prayer ever 
received answer, it would seem that it should be in 
his case. Yet the good man, the scholar, the states- 
man and theologian died, just as he would have died 
had no petition been sent to the throne of grace. The 
ocean ship, freighted with passengers, is broken 
through by an iceberg, and slowly filling, settles 
down into the waves. Wildly the best and purest 
men and women pray to God for help, but the ship 
is not thereby sustained, or delayed a single moment 
in her final plunge into the abysses of the sea. 

On occasions of great public calamity, where 
drought blasts the harvest, locusts devour the fields, 
or pestilence rages, days are set apart for prayer. 
Every minister of the gospel and every layman 
daily prays with utmost fervor. Yet the rain falls 
not, the locusts devour, and the -pestilence pursues 
its way without shadow of turning. Prayer in such 
cases is as hopeless as it would be if the maker 



166 PRAYER. 

should stand on a railroad track, and, when he saw 
a train approaching, pray to God to stop it. It is a 
petition for the impossible. 

In one way it yields results, often of an astonish- 
ing character. If the makers are sincere, the atti- 
tude of prayer harmonizes and strenghthens their 
faculties, and enables them to bear with greater 
fortitude the vicissitudes of time ; to bear, but not 
avert, impending fate. How many captives chained 
in dungeons have, in imitation of the apostle, 
•prayed fervently with perfect faith that their chains 
might fall off, and the bars of their prison door be 
drawn aside, and met with no response. How many 
zealous martyrs have been led to the stake, praying 
to Jesus for deliverance which came not ; and Jesus 
himself, in the hour of his mortal agony, prayed to 
the Father, to be answered by silence, and to find 
bitterness and mockery ; a cross and a crown of 
thorns, where he had expected a throne and the 
glittering scepter of the nations. 

The once all-powerful belief in the ability of dele- 
gated men to control events and elements by suppli- 
cation to the Deity, which made the "medicine 
men," the priests and jugglers, the tyrants of man- 
kind, has now, in civilized countries, dwindled into 
the intercessions for moral help, and an occasional 
prayer for physical changes, as for rain in times 
of drought, the staying of grasshoppers, or the 
approach of disease. 

It is difficult for the gospel minister to give up 
entirely the role of the " medicine man," and cease 
to pray for the sick in the misty hope that God will 
answer. It is almost as troublesome for the preacher 
to let go his hold on the weather, and not follow 
the Indian's rattling gourd, shaken at the sky, with 
prayer for the same object. 



FWJSEY'8 PRAYER. 167 

This is the degradation of prayer, and the preacher 
clasps hands with the juggler. That this pretense is 
yet maintained, is made most remarkably apparent 
in a work on prayer recently published. An inci- 
dent in the life of President Finney, of Oberlin Col- 
lege, copied from its pages, will amply suffice to illus- 
trate this anachronism, a belief of savage man forced 
into the highest civilized thought. 

There was drought in Oberlin, and the thin, hard 
clay soil of that region suffered severely from a total 
failure for three months, of rain. Clouds promised 
the desired moisture, but hovered over the lake, and 
poured out their waters there. This they did day 
after day, raising the hopes of the anxious, and then 
drifting away. 

Finney, who was an enthusiast, was walking in 
the street one day, when a friend met him and said: 
" I should like to know what you mean by preaching 
that God is always wise and always good, when you 
see him pouring out that great rain on the lake, 
where it can do no good, and leaving us to suffer so 
terribly for want of the wasted water ?" 

Finney said: ;; His words cut me to the very heart; 
I turned and ran home to my closet, fell on my 
knees, and told the Lord what had been said to me, 
and besought him, for the honor of his great name, 
to confound this caviler, and show forth the glory 
of his power, and the greatness of his love. I pleaded 
with him that he had encouraged his people to pray* 
for rain, and now the time had come for him to show 
his power, and his faithfulness as a hearer of prayer. 
Before I rose from my knees there was a sound of 
a rushing mighty wind. I looked out, and lo, the 
heavens were black ; clouds were rolling up, and 
rain soon fell in torrents, continuing for two full 
hours." 



168 PRAYER. 

Those who are acquainted with the lake region 
know the peculiarity of these storms, and will readily 
understand the rapidity of their coming. They re- 
quire no prayer to move them, and that the coinci- 
dence of the rain and the prayer should be endorsed 
by leaders in theology, is a strange instance of mental 
aberration, or, as Darwin would say, ativism. The 
absurdity of the representation apparently escapes 
the notice of those who accept it. The zealous Fin- 
ney telling an Omnipotent God what he ought to do 
to show his power and keep his promise for his own 
interest and reputation, as though the rain was not 
withheld for some good purpose well known by the 
Omnipotent ! And then by his pleading, this little 
President of a then obscure college, changed the will 
and purpose of the Almighty, and brought the rain 
to a narrow section of country, leaving regions be- 
yond equally suffering without a drop of moisture ! 

Such instances prove too much. They maintain 
the changefulness of God, and the power of man to 
persuade Him to alter the course of the elements. 
Mr. Finney heralds with ostentatious pride this case 
when the clouds came at his call; he does not tell us 
of the prayers he and all the praying people of that 
region had daily offered for weeks and months for 
the same object, which brought no moisture ! 

Rain is sure to come at some time, and if the sea- 
sons of prayer be continued long enough, the last one 
will surely be followed by rain. 

This instance is introduced to illustrate the limi- 
tation of the power of prayer. The insensible ele- 
ments can not be influenced. The clouds and the 
winds, the storm and the earthquake, will not come 
or go at our bidding, or the invocation, even, of a 
saint. 

Yet earnest prayer, within fixed limitations, may 



BR. SMITH'S NARRATIVE. 169 

be and has been answered, as is proven by innumer- 
able witnesses. Not by a personal God to whom the 
appeal is made, but by harmonizing the prayer-giver 
with subtile spiritual forces, which work in ways not 
comprehended by a gross view of the world. When 
we consider human and spiritual beings as laved by 
an ocean of attenuated substance, elastic and recept- 
ive beyond comprehension, and that each being is a 
vortex of vibrations, we understand how from an in- 
tensely wrought mind vibrant thoughts go forth, and 
although they strike an infinite number of indivi- 
duals who are not sensitive to them, they find others 
in mortal bodies or spiritual, as harps like attuned 
set each other in vibration, and move those thus 
receptive to answer their appeals. The power and 
strength given by prayer arise from this harmoniz- 
ing of their being by spiritual aspiration, which lift 
the mind into the realm of superior spiritual forces. 
It is then that the appeal to God goes forth in vibra- 
tions, to be recognized by spirit friends, and by them 
conveyed to mortals who have the ability to respond, 
or directly reach some responsive mind in the mortal 
body. 

The following narrative of Dr. Joseph Smith, of 
Warrington, England, which is accredited by the 
journal of the Society for Psychological Research, 
May, 1885, is a fine illustration of what is popularly 
known as God's answer to prayer : 

" I was sitting one evening reading when a voice 
came to me, saying: 

"'Send a loaf to James Grady's/ I continued 
reading, and the voice continued with greater em- 
phasis, and this time it was accompanied with an 
irresistible impulse to get up. I obeyed, and went 
into the village and bought a loaf of bread, and see- 
ing a lad at the shop door, I asked him if he knew 



170 PRAYER. 

James Grady. He said he did, so I had him carry it 
and say that a gentleman sent it. Mrs. Grady was a 
member of my class, and I went down next morn- 
ing to see what came of it, when she told me that a 
strange thing had happened to her last night. She 
said she wished to put the children to bed, but they 
began to cry for want of food, and she had nothing 
to give them. She then went to prayer, to ask God 
to give them something, soon after which the lad 
came to the door with the loaf. I calculated on in- 
quiry that the prayer and the voice I heard exactly 
coincided in point of time/" 

As a member of his class, a close connection existed 
between Dr. Smith and Mrs. Grady, and he was there- 
by receptive to the eager appeal she made, incited by 
her children's cry for bread. 

The case of Henry Young Stilling has become a 
text in most orthodox books on the subject of prayer. 
He was a physician at the court of the Grand Duke of 
Baden, the intimate friend of Goethe, who, impressed 
with his remarkable experiences, urged him to write 
an account of his life. 

Stilling desired to study medicine at a university, 
and in an answer to prayer to know which he should 
choose was directed to Strasburg. In order to attend 
that school he required a thousand dollars, and he had 
only forty-six ; yet with this he started on his journey/ 
freely relying on heavenly aid. On reaching Frank- 
fort, he had only a dollar left. He made his case 
known by prayer. Walking on the street he met a 
merchant, who, learning his purpose of attending the 
university, asked where the money was to come from. 
Stilling replied that he had only one dollar, but his 
Heavenly Father was rich and would provide for him. 
"Well, I am one of your Father's stewards," said 
the merchant, and handed him thirty-three dollars. 



REV. H. BUSHJS ELL'S NARRATIVE. 171 

Settled at Strasburg, his fee to the lectures became 
due and must be paid by Thursday evening, or his 
name stricken from the roll. He spent the day in 
prayer, and at five o'clock nothing had come. His 
anxiety became unbearable, when a knock was heard 
at his door, and his landlord entered and inquired 
how he liked the room, and if ne had money. "No, 
I have no money," cried Stilling in despair. "I see 
how it is," replied the landlord ; Ci God has sent me 
to help you," and handed him forty dollars. Stilling 
threw himself on the floor and thanked God, while 
the tears rained from his eyes. His whole life's ex- 
perience was of a like character. He prayed con- 
stantly to God, and at the last moment his necessities 
were supplied. 

How difficult it is to suppose that God interested 
himself especially in one* of thousands of students, 
overlooking the others, equally poor and needy, and 
as earnest in their efforts ! How easy to suppose that 
an angel friend, foreseeing the great capabilities of 
Stilling, interested himself, and by influencing this 
or that mind smoothed the way, and furnished the 
means he imperatively needed. It will be remarked 
that at no time were his necessities exceeded. No 
one gave him lavishly, or more than sufficed for his 
urgent needs. 

Rev. H. Bushnell, in his " Nature and the Super, 
natural," refers to an interesting incident he learned 
in his visit to California. The man had hired his 
little house of one room, in a new trading town that 
was planted last year, agreeing to give a rent of ten 
dollars a month. When the pay day came he had 
nothing to meet the demand, nor could he see whence 
the money was to come. Consulting with his wife, 
they agreed that prayer, so often tried, was their 
only hope. They went according to prayer, and 



172 PRAYER. 

found assurance that their want would be supplied. 

When the morning came the money did not. The 
rent owner made his appearance earlier than usual. 
As he entered the door their hearts began to sink, 
whispering that now, for once, their prayer had 
failed. But before the demand was made, a neighbor 
came and called out the untimely visitor, engaging 
him in conversation a few minutes at the door. 
Meanwhile, a stranger came in saying, " Doctor, I 
owe you ten dollars for attending me in a fever, and 
here is the money. " He could not remember either 
the man or the service, but was willing to be con- 
vinced, and had the money when the rent owner 
again entered. The same explanation applies here 
as to the preceding. 

The following indicates not an answer to the 
prayer, but a direct communication. It is related by 
Dr. Wilson, of Philadelphia : "The packet ship, 'Al- 
bion/ full of passengers from America, was wrecked 
on the coast of Ireland, and the news was that all on 
board had perished. A minister near Philadelphia, 
reading a list of the lost, found the name of one of 
the members of his congregation, and went immedi- 
ately to inform the wife of the sad fact. She had 
been earnestly praying during the voyage of her 
husband, and had received assurance of his safety 
amid great danger. Hence, to the astonishment of 
her pastor, after he had informed her of the ship- 
wreck, and showed her the list of names of those 
who were lost, she told him that it was a mistake, 
that her husband had been in extreme peril, but was 
not dead. When the next tidings were received it 
proved that her husband was among the passengers, 
and had been in great peril, but that he had escaped, 
and was the only one saved," 

There could be no connection between the wife's 



WASHINGTON ALLSTON W EXPERIENCE. 173 

prayer and safety of her husband, but the state of 
mind induced by prayer allowed her to receive the 
message of his safety. 

The celebrated artist, Washington Allston, refined 
and sensitive to a fault, had at first to struggle with 
great difficulties, and endure the pinchings of pov- 
erty. At one time he was reduced to the want of 
even a loaf of bread for himself and wife. In des- 
pair he locked himself in his studio and earnestly 
prayed for assistance. While thus engaged, there 
was a knock at the door, and opening it a stranger 
appeared, who inquired if the artist still possessed 
the beautiful painting, "The Angel Uriel." Mr. All- 
ston drew it from a corner, and brushed off* the dust- 
The stranger said he had greatly admired it when it 
was on exhibition, and inquired the price. The artist 
replied that as no one seemed to appreciate it he had 
ceased to offer it. " Will four hundred pounds pur- 
chase ?" said the stranger. " I never dared ask one- 
half of that." "Then it is mine," exclaimed the 
visitor, who explained that he was the Marquis of 
Stafford, leaving the artist overwhelmed with grati- 
tude. 

Where the answer to prayer follows so directly the 
appeal, we may suppose that the intensity of thought 
may affect directly the individual who responds. 
Thus, when Allston was so despairing, his thoughts 
would go widely forth, and the Marquis of Stafford 
having seen the painting, and desiring it, might 
have the thought of it awakened, and be thereby 
drawn at the special time to the artist's studio. Of 
course the case is also open to the direct intervention 
of angelic messengers, for all this class of facts inti- 
mately blend, and are controlled by the same gen- 
eral laws, and it is difficult to determine to which of 
the two causes they should be referred. The door 



174 PEA YER. 

that admits angelic beings makes the influence of 
thought waves also possible. 

The cure of Melancthon by the prayers of Luther 
is well known to the student of the Reformation. 
The former had been given over to die, when Luther 
rushed to the death-bed of his loved friend with 
tears and exclamations of agony. Melancthon was 
aroused and said : " O Luther, is this you ? Why do 
you not let me depart in peace ?" " We can't spare 
you yet, Philip," was Luther's answer. Then he 
bowed down for a long hour in prayer, until he felt 
he had been answered. Then he took Melancthon's 
hand, who said: "'Dear Luther, why do you not let 
me depart in peace?" "No, no, Philip, we can not 
spare you from the field of labor;" and added ? 
" Philip, take this soup, or I will excommunicate 
you." Melancthon took the soup, began to revive, 
and lived many years to assist the sturdy reformer 
with his facile pen. Luther went home and told his 
wife, in joyous triumph, that "God gave me my 
brother, Melancthon, in direct answer to prayer." 

Now, such a cure would be called faith cure, or 
magnetic healing. The state of feeling induced by 
long and fervent prayer was the source of magnetic 
power, and therein, and not through the direct inter- 
vention of God, was the prayer answered. 

Bishop Bowman gives the following account of the 
unexpected recovery of Bishop Simpson, when he 
was supposed to be dying : 

"I remember once, when there was a conference 
at Mount Vernon, Ohio, at which I was present, 
Bishop James was presiding one afternoon, and after 
reading a despatch saying that Bishop Simpson was 
dying in Pittsburg, asked that the conference unite 
in prayer, that his life might be saved. We knelt, 
and Taylor, the great street preacher, led. After the 



BISHOP BOWMAN'S RESTORATION. 175 

first few sentences, in which I joined with my whole 
heart, ray mincl seemed to be at ease, and I did not 
pay much attention to the rest of the prayer only to 
notice its beauty. When we arose from our knees, 
I turned to a brother and said, ' Bishop Simpson will 
not die ; I feel it.' He assured me that he had re- 
ceived the same impression. The word was passed 
around, and over thirty ministers present said they 
had the same feelings. I took my book and made a 
note, of the hour and circumstance. Several months 
afterwards, I met Bishop Simpson, and asked him 
what he did to recover his health. He did not know ; 
but the physician had said it was a miracle. He 
said, that one afternoon, when at the point of death, 
the doctor left him, saying that he should be left 
alone (by the doctor) for half an hour. At the end 
of that time, the doctor returned, and noticed a great 
change. He was startled, and asked the family 
what had been done, and they replied, nothing at 
all. That half hour, I find, by making allowance 
for difference of localities, was just the time we were 
praying for him at Mount Vernon. From that time 
on he steadily improved, and has lived to bless the 
Church and humanity. " 
Bishop Bowman adds: 

" On the God who has so often answered my 
prayers, I will still rely, scientific men and philoso- 
phers to the contrary notwithstanding." The " scien- 
tific man" would reply that he had no desire to dis- 
pute the fact as stated, but, instead of a personal 
God who had struck, down Bishop Simpson with dis- 
ease, changing his purpose because supplicated by 
the ministeral conference, the intense fervency of 
thought of that conference united in prayer had gone 
forth in a magnetic beam, and given the suffering 
patient the strength of a new life. If there was divine 



176 PRA YER. 

agency, it stood back of the laws of spiritual forces, 
in which case, prayer was only a means of prepara- 
tion, unitizing, harmonizing and directing. 

He was affected just the same as he would have 
been had he been in the conference hall, for distance, 
as has been repeatedly shown, is an unimportant ele- 
ment in the exercise of these psychic forces. 

There are several charitable institutions which 
their founders claim to have been entirely support- 
ed by means of donations made in answer to prayer. 
As these are often brought forward in evidence of 
the direct answer to prayer, they become of interest 
to the student of this subject. 

The Bristol Orphan Home is typical of its class. 
George Muller, its founder, began with no wealth, 
aside from his sublime faith in his appeals for divine 
aid. In his Thirty-sixth Annual Report, he says that 
in 1875 his faith was put to trial most severely. He 
commenced the year with $20,000 in his treasury, 
which in three months was reduced one-half, or only 
enough to meet expenses for a single month. The 
treasury had never been as low, and the number of 
orphans had doubled. He fervently prayed, as the 
situation became more alarming, and at the end of 
the month so many donations flowed in he had 
$48,000. 

In the forty-one years this institution has been 
conducted, during which no appeal for charity has 
been made directly, except through prayer, $3,325,000 
has been received. As the results of its use, 46,400 
persons have been taught in schools wholly sus- 
tained, and tens of thousands in schools assisted; 
96,000 Bibles, 247,000 Testaments, and 180,000 smaller 
portions of the Scriptures circulated ; above 53,500,000 
tracts and books in various languages distributed; 
of late years 170 missionaries annually assisted ; 



MULLEWS ORPHANAGE, 177 

4,677 orphans cared for ; five large edifices built, at 
a cost of $575,000, able to accommodate 2,050 or^ 
phans. 

Such an institution may have no organized solicit- 
ing board on the earthly side, but of necessity must 
have on the spiritual side. It is a potent center of 
attraction to those who have means, and are looking 
about for some worthy object. The leaders, with 
self-abnegation, devote their lives to the unselfish 
work, and the angel messengers, with equal devo- 
tion, act as solicitors to those they are able to ap- 
proach. 

We may also regard as a potent factor, earnest 
prayer going out on waves of thought, and directly 
affecting susceptible minds, calling their attention 
to the great charity, and influencing them to sus- 
tain it. 

This explanation of the effect of prayer, and of the 
causes contributing to its answering, while removing 
it from the realm of miracle, makes the subject one 
of absorbing interest. The Divine Spirit never di- 
rectly answers, but there are laws and conditions 
through which the earnest spirit is granted the as- 
sistance it desires. It is a mistake to refer the an- 
swer directly to God, as it would be to say he sup- 
ports the world in space by his extended arm. The 
Protestant churches hold as sacrilege the appeal to 
any being but God. The Catholics are more wise, 
and offer their prayers to their patron saints, by 
which comforting love and assuring affection are 
awakened by direct contact. 



178 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

Christian Science, Mind Cure, Faith 
Cure — their Psychic Relations. 



Out of the recently received views of spirit, de- 
rived by psychic investigations, have grown a num- 
ber of systems, drawing nice distinctions between 
their claims, and, in some instances, expanding to 
the estate of psychic science, attempting not only to 
correllate the facts of spirit, but to found on them a 
system of morals. It is because of this that Chris- 
tian science, theology, mind cure, faith cure, meta- 
physics, etc., have a place in the discussions enter- 
tained in this volume. Nearly all of these begin as 
methods of healing. Their first office is to restore 
health. Such has been the application of almost all 
new discoveries, which reveal and are half shrouded 
in mystery. Electricity and magnetism met this 
fate, and mesmerism was at first thought to be a 
curative agent for all diseases. 

It is a singular fact that all religious systems, from 
that of the lowest savage, whose god is represented 
by a stick or a tuft of feathers, to the purest form of 
Christianity, depend on miraculous healing for their 
evidence of genuineness. It is true the weight of 
such evidence is constantly lessened with the ad- 
vance of culture, yet it still remains in force, and by 
many believers is received as conclusive and final. 

Charlatanism seized mesmerism, as it has every- 
thing new, and brought its healing potencies into 
disgrace by its ignorance and pretensions. The 
germ of truth was ther^ and from time to time has 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. THEOSOPHY. 179 

reappeared under startling names, and in some in- 
stances so changed as to appear superficially, as 
something entirely new. Those who scorn mesmer- 
ism received the new claimants, the only change 
being in name. 

I propose to briefly examine some of these, and, if 
possible, find the rock of truth on which they rest. 

Christian Science. — First, as having attracted 
most attention, is Christian Science. It claims to be 
a system for curing the sick, preserving health, and 
a perfect moral guide in the conduct of life. 

Healing the sick is only an accidental means of 
testing the genuineness of the devotee's belief. Heal- 
ing is the first step on the lowest plane. It makes 
the proud claim of being the Science of Spirit, and 
as spirit is causation, Christian Science is the Sci- 
ence of Sciences. It aims to be a complete system . 
of religion and morality, and demands the highest, 
most unselfish, devoted lives. It demands universal 
love, unfaltering charity; neither to think or act 
evil; the suppression of scorn and hate; a belief that 
all is good, for all is God, who is absolutely good. 

It widely differs from the "faith cure," and mind 
cure, as it introduces and demands the highest ex- 
cellence in the conduct of life, while the faith cure 
calls for simple faith in the means employed, or in 
the power of God. 

• Christian Science shows the source of its inspira- 
tion when it declares healing to be a test of faith and 
character. 

Theosophy resembles Christian Science, extending 
over the broadest field of morality, intellectuality, 
and spirit, eschewing healing as a test. The teach- 
ings of both, by appropriating all that is valuable in 



180 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

other doctrines, are similar. Theosophy, however, 
states one fundamental doctrine on which its super- 
structure rests. This is the pre-existence of the soul 
or spirit, and its repeated incarnations on earth. As 
this doctrine has been criticised elsewhere, the argu- 
ments against it need not be here introduced. As 
guides in the conduct of life they have nothing true 
which they can claim as new, and their distinctive 
features remain to be demonstrated, or are revived 
speculations and dreams of the world's dawn, when 
nature was a riddle and life a mystery. 

The Faith Cure rests on the declarations of the 
Bible, that faith will remove mountains, and re- 
deem the lost. When Christ or his disciples laid 
hands on the sick to heal, the first and paramount 
question was: Have they faith? There is curative 
power in faith. It is half gained to have the sick 
confident that they will recover; and the belief that 
they will be sustained by certain means often has 
more influence than the means. 

The Mental Cure asserts the superiority of the 
mind over the body, as a scientific fact, without ap- 
peal to God or faith. In vital essence, in making 
the body the servant of the mind, all these sys- 
tems are identical. Christian Metaphysics and 
Christian Science, a difference of name, and mental 
cure, mind cure, etc., have the same basis. Each 
has enclosed a narrow field, and writes its name over 
the entrance. Christian Science, by making the 
greatest display, has become most conspicuous. 
Many of its propositions call forth no dissent, others 
are on their face too absurd to require contradiction. 

The same line of argument will apply to all these 
systems, and they need not be taken separately. 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE MIND. 181 

Influence of the Mind Over the Body.— The mind 
has a very great influence over the body, as has been 
remarked by those who have investigated the sub- 
ject since the time of Hipocrates. The strongest 
mind sometimes is found in a weak body. 

Lord Brougham, with a frail physique, performed 
the most Herculean mental tasks. It is said that he 
once worked one hundred and forty-four hours, or 
six consecutive days, and then slept all Saturday 
night, Sunday, and Sunday night, and was waked 
Monday morning by his valet to resume his labors. 

The power of mind over the body is illustrated by 
the annals of explorers in the frigid zone, and in the 
deadly regions of the tropics. The leaders of such 
expeditions, with all the burden and responsibilities 
of their position, bear up better than their men, and 
rarely succumb to adversities to which the latter 
yield. The hardships met by Dr. Kane and Lieut. 
Greely are fresh in the mind ; and the invincible 
Stanley, braving the savage foes and deadly malaria 
of the Black Continent, is another example. Such 
leaders, encouraged by the honors success will yield, 
and dreading the shame of defeat more than death, 
persevere against all opposing forces, while their 
men, with less at stake either to win or lose, sink, 
apathetically, before reaching the goal. In such 
cases, the will sustains the body, and shows its in- 
dependence of the material forces which affect it. ' 

In no instance is the control of mind over the sen- 
sations, affecting it through the body, shown with ; 
greater force than in the terrible ordeals of martyr- 
dom. The weak and delicate woman, as well as the 
strong man, was bound on the rack, or subjected to 
the unspeakable horrors of the thumbscrew, burning 
pincers, or the smouldering fagots, and yet so far 
from uttering moans or sighs, smiled on their tor- 



182 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

mentors, or sang hozannas amid the flames. Their 
minds had risen to such exaltation that physical 
pain was unfelt, in fact, was a relief to the mental 
tension. 

There is no pathological phenomena more freely 
attested than the sudden vitiation of the secretions 
by intense mental disturbances. A mother subjected 
to intense fright, or fear, will have her milk become 
poisonous to her babe. Dr. A. Combe mentions 
an instance where a mother left her child to assist 
the father in combat with a drunken soldier. After 
the fight was over she nursed the babe, which was 
strong and healthy. After a few minutes it ceased 
nursing, and sank dead in its mother's arms. The 
milk had become a virulent poison. 

A lady with a violent temper was warned by her 
physician against indulging it while nursing her 
babe, and she had obeyed until the child was sev- 
eral, months old, strong and healthy. At that time 
she became enraged at some trivial circumstance, 
and soon afterwards she nursed her babe, which 
became ill, and within an hour was dead. The 
changes wrought in the saliva by anger are well 
known. The bite of an enraged man is as much to 
be dreaded as that of a mad dog. Blood poisoning is 
almost a sure consequence of inocculation with the 
saliva of an angry man or brute. 

Hydrophobia itself is probably a spontaneous pro- 
duction in canines subjected to starvation and ill- 
usage. 

Great joy or grief produces secretions in the blood, 
which make it poisonous. The prostration by grief 
is only equaled by that of violent disease. The 
blood and all secretions therefrom become so 
affected that a long time is required to eliminate the 
morbific matter from the system. If this is not ac- 



ENNOBLING PURSUITS. 183 

complished, lingering illness or death is the final 
result. This is distinct from sudden death, on the 
disclosure of some startling news, of grief or joy. 
The heart in these instances suddenly fails at the 
nervous shock. Successful labor is always invigor- 
ating, while unsuccessful is depressing. It was ob- 
served in the early mining days of California that 
a stranger passing the claims could readily discover 
those that paid and those that did not, by the man- 
ners of the men who were working them. If un- 
successful, they were depressed, ill with fevers and 
idle. If successful they were at work early and 
late, cheerful, well, and energetic. 

Every pursuit that enobles and elevates the mind, 
tranquilizes the system, enhances the general 
health, and prolongs life. 

Such is the wonderful sway the mind holds over 
the body. On the other hand, we find the body ex- 
citing a powerful influence on the mind ; so intense 
and complete. that leading physiologists believe that 
the latter is a result of, and entirely dependent on, 
the former, and having no existence independent 
thereof. 

The microscope has poured a flood of light on dis- 
ease. In most cases, as with these epidemics and 
contagions, a specific germ is introduced into the 
blood and multiplies, feeding on the vital fluid. If 
taken into the system of a saint it will, by multi- 
plication, produce the disease, just as certainly as in 
the system of the vilest malefactor. There would be 
more reasonable grounds for hoping to drive a hun- 
gry tiger away by mind cure, than the myriads of 
microbes that swarm in a drop of the fever patient's 
blood, or the microbes in the lungs of a consumptive. 

Then is the system of mental cure a sham ? No ! 
It claims too much. When millions of baccilli 



184 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

swarm in the lungs, or the micrococus brings on 
fever, shall we say we are well, that the mind, as a 
part of God, can not be sick, and as the body is 
fathered by the mind it can not be ? We may say 
this, but the inexorable logic of facts refute our 
opinions. We might as well attempt to stay the 
spring of the tiger by an effort of will. 

But there is a consideration back of this. By the 
accumulation of an endless series of taints of body 
and of mind, by false ideas and views of life, the 
power of mind over the body can not be compared 
with what it would be in a perfect state of right liv- 
ing. This is a consideration of greatest value, for it 
shows us, not what the past has been, but what the 
future may be. 

The limits of the power of the mind over the body 
are npt known, but with knowledge it ever enlarges 
its boundaries. The class of diseases which may be 
regarded as essentially corporal, as the previously 
mentioned contagions produced by microbes, the 
effects of ptomaines, and the mineral and vegetable 
poisons, has its limits contracted by mental influ- 
ences. Individuals in the most terrible contagions, 
although in contact with the sick and dying, physi- 
cians, nurses or companions, are often exempt. 
Their systems do not furnish the necessary condi- 
tions for growth of the disease germs. Such individu- 
als are fearless ; and it is said that their indifference 
to danger is their shield of protection ; yet it is often 
the case that when they become exhausted by 
excessive care, they fall victims. This conclusion, 
however, may be safely drawn, that there are con- 
ditions of body or mind, or of both, invulnerable to 
disease. What these conditions are we may not 
now know, but it is possible to know. 

In these cases of purely physical disease, the body 



HEALING AGENCIES. 185 

reacts on the mind, and the giving way of the will is 
the first indication of the approach of the malady. 
It is folly to talk of the will overcoming a disease 
that has insiduously sapped its foundation. This is 
not saying that were the wrong conditions of living 
righted, and the taints of heredity eliminated, the 
power of the will would not be able to maintain the 
body against all succeeding influences. But to reach 
that perfect state will require many generations of 
rightly directed culture. 

If grief, anger, or excessive joy are able to vitiate 
secretions, and cause sickness and death, a happy 
frame of mind, intellectual exertion and moral ex- 
cellence tend to the perfect health of these secretions. 
Health is a condition to be gained and kept by care- 
ful observance of its laws, and these laws are of the 
physical as well as mental being. 

Whatever truth there is in these newly named 
theories of healing, is identically the same as that 
claimed by the mesmerists and magnetists. The 
process, the cause and effect, are the same under 
the name of Christian Science as that of mesmer- 
ism. In the large class of diseases called nervous, 
the soothing influence of another mind is of un- 
measured benefit. Even the hope aroused that some 
mind is exciting its will to relieve, is beneficial. 
The strengthened will and imagination are wonder- 
fully healing agencies. While the influence of 
the mind over the body is admitted without con- 
tradiction so long as the former is connected with 
the latter, the limitations of the physical world 
must be felt. There is a sickness of the mind, 
and of the body, and over the latter the mind has 
not full control. Yet with a race freed from hered- 
itary taint, having for generations obeyed the 
laws of health until its conditions are fixed by 



186 • CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

heredity, it may not be said what the power of the 
mind may be. 

If the mother can stamp her unborn child with 
,the monstrosity she fancies in her fright; if 
she can impart the insane thirst for stimulants 
land the fiendish hate and cruelty of savages, 
might she not by glorified conditions, exalted mo- 
tives, and the over-shadowing consciousness that 
her mind is divine, the creator of an immortal 
being, endow the child with angelic qualities and 
make it a divine being ? The children of many 
generations of such mothers, what exalted spir- 
itual and intellectual attainment would be their 
inheritance ! 

Nor should the mother alone be held responsible, as 
has been the custom. Divine motherhood is linked 
with divine fatherhood, the opposite element, but of 
equal value. The germinal impulse carries with it 
all that has entered into the lives of remotest 
parental ancestors, and the recipient mother acts 
upon it, and is reacted on, until her entire being, 
physical and spiritual, is modified. However grand 
the ideal excellence of the future, it is not realized 
in the present, and may not be for ages to come. 
The present race of men are born with the sins of all 
the past stamped into their constitutions. It is folly 
to teach that there is no sickness except in the 
mind ; idle to teach faith can cure disease, the seeds 
of which were planted unnumbered generations ago, 
and grown rankly from parent to child. Purity, 
true nobility of life, spiritual culture, devotion to 
right, and obedience to the laws of health may be 
accepted and the ideal attempted, but not fully 
realized now. 

Meanwhile, old methods must not be wholly dis- 
carded. Old remedies can not be safely cast aside. 



DEATH COMES TO ALL. 187 

The lame must have their staff and crutch until 
strong enough to walk alone. 

Conclusion. — The Ideal may be sketched in our 
fond fancy, and the attempt to realize it began by 
living a higher, nobler, purer life. Know we what 
this means ? It means more than simple living. 
There is everything beyond that. What this means 
will be best comprehended by referring to the pre- 
ceding pages, where it is taught that there is a 
thought-atmosphere, from which sensitive minds re- 
ceive a glorious flood of inspiration. Magnetism, 
Mesmerism, Hypnotism, or the states of healing by 
Faith or Christian Science are but the temporary 
approaches to that one condition of sensitiveness. 
In that condition great changes may be affected in 
the vital forces promotive of the normal functions of 
the various organs, as fear, grief, remorse, etc., may 
disturb their healthy action, and induce pathological 
changes in them, 

Death will come to all physical forms sooner or 
later, for it is as necessary to the fulfillment of our 
destiny as to the transformation of the caterpillar 
to the butterfly; but disease and all the sufferings, 
losses, and disappointments in its train, may be, and 
will be, eliminated, when mortal life is so ordered that 
it will constantly walk in the shadow of spiritual 
forces. 

Then sickness will be regarded as a mark of ignor- 
ance, if not a crime. 



188 WHAT THE IMMORTAL STATE MUST BE, 



What the Immortal State Must Be. 



The Lead of tlie Argument. — In pursuing the 
study of the subjects presented in the preceding 
pages, the student often catches a glipse of an intelli- 
gent force existing after the death of the physical 
being. This came through the facts presented by 
hypnotism, somnambulism, trance, clairvoyance, 
thought-transference, dreams, and the appearance 
of the deceased to near friends at a distance, at the 
time of, or soon after, the hour of dissolution. 

The continuance of existence beyond the grave 
has been made to depend on belief in certain dog- 
mas, or at least the condition of that life has been 
made thus dependent by the religious systems of the 
world. Now that science encroaches on the realm of 
faith, and these dogmas are questioned, and immor- 
tality which seemingly rests on and is supported by 
them, becomes doubtful ; yet, if it be a fact that man 
has a spirit, which is immortal, this is the most over- 
shadowing fact in the universe; one of profoundest 
interest and most consonant with the desires of the 
human heart. Around it gather our fondest hopes 
and brightest dreams ; by it the seeming disparity 
and injustice of this life are compensated ; the tear- 
ful eye is dried ; the broken heart finds balm, and the 
burdens of time and place cast aside, and the possi- 
bilities of the aspiring spirit may be realized. It is 
an unfailing staff in the hands of those who mourn 
the loved and lost, offering the only adequate con- 
solation in the cruel hour when we stand by the 
couch of death, feeling that, beyond, darkness 



BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY A CURSE. 189 

gathers thick and broods over a sea of eternal 
silence, from which only echo responds to our call 
of the name of the departed. Then it is that hope 
lifts our hearts from despair, and a positive assur- 
ance of the cc utinuity of life is worth all else in the 
world. 

The Belief in Immortality has been made a 
Curse. — This belief, so full of delight and rainbowed 
with anticipations, has been made, from the dawn 
of man's religious nature, the means of inflicting 
unspeakable tortures, both of mind and body. Self- 
ishness thrust the priest between man and the in- 
visible world of spirit, and made immortality the 
instrument wherewith it could rule with diabolical 
despotism over mankind. Even when the rain- 
maker shook his rattling calabash at the sky, and be- 
seeched the moisture-giving clouds to send down rain, 
the priestly order had fast hold on the superstitious 
savage; and in all the transformations of history, 
surging with the coming and going of countless gen- 
erations and the ebb and flow of empires, never for a 
moment has this grip been loosened. The power of 
the temporal ruler has been second to that of the 
class who held the keys of life beyond the grave. 
What if the king could cast into a dungeon, con- 
demn to the cross or the flames ? That were pain 
for a moment, or, at most, for the few years of this 
life ; and of what insignificance these short years, or 
the most terrible tortures human ingenuity could in- 
vent, to the infinite tortures extending through an 
eternal existence ? Pharoah might command Egypt 
to-day, but, to-night, his spirit would be summoned 
before the tribunal of the Dead ; and those austere 
priestly judges would decide whether he be cast to 
the crocodiles of the Nile to become extinct, or 



190 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

again, clad in his mummified body, resurrected and 
purified, a companion of the gods. 

What a position for an ignorant man ! Immortality 
is the Promethean curse, enabling the vultures to 
inflict never-ending torments. The sweetest boon is 
oblivion, and that is denied. The sun may fade from 
the heavens and the stars cease to shine ; but the 
spirit can not escape its doom, and will not have ex- 
perienced even then the first pangs of its sufferings. 
Is it strange that men went wild with this dreadful be- 
lief ? Ignorant men, who feared the unseen, intan- 
gible spirits of the air more than the accumulated 
tortures that human ruler might inflict, saw in the 
priests who claimed the power to control this intan- 
gible world, who held the keys of the Great Unseen, 
the only hope of escape. How well that order has 
seized its vantage, and, fanning the flames of super- 
stition, stifled reason and led poor Humanity over 
the quaking bog-lands and reeking marshes of 
myth-theology ! 

This life is nothing compared with that which is 
to come. Its most innocent pleasures are sins ; for 
the body itself is sinful, and by sin man came into 
the world. Pressed down beneath the weight of uni- 
versal disaster, the doctrine of Jesus was the wail of 
despair. Take no heed of the morrow. Live only 
for to-day. Give all to the poor. Resist not the 
tyrant wrong. This life is a vale of tears, and the 
eye that weeps most shall be the brightest in glory 
in the life which is to come. O Jesus, on thy cross, 
what infinite misery has come from this misconcep- 
tion of thy teachings ! Men, believing that their immor- 
tal spirits were chained to sinful bodies, rushed in 
herds to the mountain cave or lonely desert, and, by 
fasting and thirst, by hair-cloth garments wearing 
through the flesh to the bone, by flagellation and 



SPOTLESS LIVES. 191 

daily crucifixion, sought to expiate the sins of the 
body, and enter the next life purified. 

Believing in an immortal life, they sought to force 
their belief on others, and proselyte by sword and 
torture. Dogmatism grew rankly luxuriant in this 
hot-bed of ignorance and superstition. Humanity 
was bound to the wheel ; and ingenuity exhausted 
its skill in demoniacal inventions whereby severer 
pangs might be evoked, that through physical suf- 
fering the spirit might gain purification. Poor 
humanity might well exclaim, "Blessed be oblivion 
to this curse of Immortality ! " 

Not to lead a happy and perfect life, but to avoid 
the pangs of hell, to escape the consequences of 
original sin, was the object to which all energies 
were directed. And there was obligation to propa- 
gate this belief until received by all the world. Out 
of this doctrine came centuries of persecution, 
such as the heathen world never dreamed of. If 
your relative or friend accepted what you regarded 
erroneous dogmas, which would send him to eternal 
torment would it not be plain duty for you to use 
every means to persuade and convince him, even if 
necessary, by force ? For should you, in last ex- 
tremity, destroy his body, what fleeting conse- 
quence, if you saved thereby his soul ! 

The savage, having killed his enemy, trembles at 
the thought that the spirit has escaped, and may 
work untold mischief. He sits down at the can-' 
nibal feast, that, by eating the body, he may absorb 
the spirit, and thus be doubly avenged, by blotting 
out his foe, by making his body and spirit a part of 
himself. 

Noble and spotless lives have grown out of Christi- 
anity, as out of other systems of religion, as beautiful 
lilies grow out of the slime ; but they grew in defi- 



192 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 

ance of its teachings, which make this life of no 
value compared with the next. As all religions 
rest on the foundation of belief in a future life, 
so all the religious wars which have cursed man- 
kind are referable to it; all persecutions; all the 
unutterable sufferings, physical and spiritual, which 
have made the centuries one long night of agony. 
It has blotted the star of hope from the heavens, 
and filled the vaulted darkness with the bitter wails 
of despair. 

Humanity rolling onward in a vast river, to plunge 
over the crags of death into a bottomless pit of eter- 
nal agony, and the best that Christianity has offered, 
or can offer, is eternal psalm-singing to golden harps. 
" Saving souls " has been the theme of the Christian 
world for nearly two thousand years, and various 
have been the means employed. Dungeon, rack, 
the flames, social ostracism — how shall I find space 
to catalogue the endless names of methods which 
curdle the blood at bare mention ! The cannibal, 
feasting on his foe, is engaged in the honorable effort 
of saving a soul, and the priestly torturer is doing 
the same. The Brunos were chained amid the fagots' 
flame, to save their souls and the souls of others led 
astray by their doctrines. Go down into the dimly 
lighted tribunal hall, where God's vicegerents , sit in 
judgment. Before them stands one gone astray 
in belief. There is no argument of words. On the 
table is a little thimble with a screw at one side. 
The heretic places his fingers therein, and the judges 
turn the screws down into the tender nails. The 
compressed lips grow white, the veins knot on the 
temples, beaded sweat gathers on the brow, as 
slowly down pierces the relentless steel, until at last, 
human endurance yields, and the trembling lips 
gasp, "Dear Christ, I believe ! " Then turn back the 



TRUTH IS THE "GOLDEN MEAN." 193 

screws, ring the bells, and rejoice with great joy; for 
a soul is saved ! 

From that hall, go down a flight of stone steps to 
another in the bowels of the earth, where the walls 
are reeking with mold, and the lamp darkens in the 
foul vapor. Tread with care on the slippery floors, 
for the slime of years has gathered ; and now we have 
reached a great stone, which we can turn back like a 
trap-door, and reach an opening. Lower your lamp, 
feebly burning in the fetid atmosphere. There are 
walls of stone, there is "stone for a floor. It is like a 
jug without an outlet, except at the top. At the bot- 
tom is something moving, living ! Hush ! It moans 
and has speech ! An iron ring wears the bleed- 
ing ankle to the bone, to the ring is a chain, 
and the other end of the chain is fastened to the 
floor. What monstrous crime has this man com- 
mitted that he should thus suffer ? Nothing, except 
he has thought for himself — is lost ; and his judges 
are making the desperate attempt to save his soul ! 

Saving souls, not the life here, but that which is to 
come, has been the blight and curse of mankind. 
The doctrine of "one world at a time," and the pre- 
sent supreme, is a reaction against this essentially 
vicious dogma. Neither extreme may be true ; for 
the truth is the "golden mean," which makes the 
future life a continuity of this, carrying forward all 
its ideals to full realization, and making the spiritual 
realm held in abeyance to as fixed and unchange- 
able laws as the material world. 

By knowledge, man has been led out of the fogs 
to the highlands of free thought, and aroused from 
the nightmare of theology, which for ages held him in 
thraldom. Those were the age^ when God and Christ 
were inwrought into the Constitution of the State, 
and the Holy Bible was the foundation of the law. 



194 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

Those were the ages of St. Bartholomew massacres, 
of autos-da-fe, of the rack and the fagot. Those were 
the ages when the day was darkened by the smoke 
of burning cities, and the fair fields gleamed white 
with the bones of the slain. Those were the ages 
when the whole Christian world engaged itself in 
saving souls ! 

A Jesus may suffer on the cross ; not only one, but 
ten thousand may die, admirable in self-sacrifice 
and examples of firm adhesion to their sense of duty; 
but, for saving souls, their sacrifice is lost ; for they 
suffer for a misconception of the plan of the world. 
Man has never been lost, and can not be lost, and 
hence can not be saved by the blood of one or ten 
thousand sacrifices. 

If the future life is a continuity of this, then the 
perfection of religion is the making of this life per- 
fect. Not by crucifixion of the body, not by suf- 
fering or disappointment, but by complete and har- 
monious culture, can this be accomplished. 

The New Method. — To solve the problem of im- 
mortality by the methods of Science, to bring it up 
from the marshlands of conjecture to the region of 
absolute knowledge, belongs to the present age and 
generation. It is a task they can and must accom- 
plish. It has for so many ages been the fertile field 
of superstition, that it seems impossible to disen- 
tangle it from its unsatisfactory wrappings." The 
investigation must commence with the physical 
man as the basis of the spiritual, as through and by 
means of the body he is related to the physical world. 
He is the superlative being ; the last, greatest and 
yet incomplete effort of creative energy. All de- 
partments of science gather around him as a center, 



UNTUTORED MINDS: 195 

and to have perfect knowledge of him is to compre- 
hend the universe. 

In the earliest ages ; in the very childhood of the 
race, the momentous question was asked : What am 
I ? The solution was felt to be fraught with mo- 
mentous consequences not only in this life but the 
interminable future which was vaguely shadowed in 
the mind of savage man. The answers given became 
the foundations of the great religious systems of the 
world. The conjecture of untutored minds was re- 
ceived as the true system of causation, and growing 
hoary with age arrogated to itself infallible author- 
ity, and required implicit faith, and the exercise of 
reason, only, in making palatable the requirements 
of that faith. Conceived in an age when nature was 
an unknown realm, when science opened her mys- 
teries to the understanding, and one by one, dogmas 
claiming infallibility were shown to be false, there 
of necessity was antagonism and conflict. I do not 
propose to enlarge on the theological aspect of this 
subject more than incidentally. That treatment has 
grown "stale, flat and unprofitable," for every drop 
of vital juice it contained has been extracted long 
ago. The interminable sects, wrangling over the 
dogmatic solution of this vital question of man's 
origin and destiny, arriving at nothing determinate, 
wrangling with each other and themselves, are not 
incentives to beguile the earnest truth-seeker to fol- 
low their paths. If metaphysical theology contained 
the germ of a truthful solution, satisfaction would 
have resulted ages ago, and the mind, reposing con- 
tented with the answer, would have employed its 
energies in other directions. Instead, there is rest- 
lessness, turmoil, conflict and indecision, and never 
has been' an answer so broad and deep in Catholicity 
of truth as to meet the demand. If science fails also, 



196 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

it can not retrieve its failure by assumed infallibility. 
Its teachings are ever tentative and prophecies of 
final triumph, as the grandest study of mankind is 
man, the crowning work of science is the solution of 
this vexed question. 

Physical Man. — First, as most tangible and ob- 
vious in this investigation, is the physical man, 
the body, the temple of the psyche. The student, 
even when imbued with the doctrine of materialism, 
arises from the study of the physical machine with 
wonder and surprise akin to awe, declaring man to 
be fearfully and wonderfully made. 

It is not surprising that we die, but that we live. 
The rupture of a nerve fiber, the obstruction of a 
valve, the momentary cessation of breath, the intro- 
duction of a mote at some vital point, brings this 
most complex structure to eternal rest. By what 
constant oversight, by what persistency of repara- 
tion is it preserved from ruin ! 

This physical man is an animal, amenable to the 
laws of animal growth. His body is the type of 
which theirs are imperfect copies. From two or 
three mineral substances his bones are crystalized, 
and articulated as the bones of all vertebrate ani- 
mals, and over them the muscles are extended. 
From the amphioxus, too low in the scale of being to 
be called a fish ; a being without organs, without a 
brain; little more than an elongated sack of gela- 
tinous substance, through which a white line marks 
the position of the spinal cord and the future spinal 
axis ; there is a slow and steady evolution to the per- 
fected skeleton of man. His osseous structure is the 
type of all. The fin of the fish, the huge paddle of 
the whale, the cruel paw of the tiger, the hoof of 
the horse, the wing of the bird, and the wonderfully 



PHYSICAL MAN. 197 

flexible hand of man, so exquisite in adaptations to 
be taken as an unqualified evidence of design, are all 
fashioned out of the same elementary bones, after 
one model. The change of form to meet the wants 
of their possessors, results from the relative enlarge- 
ment or atrophy of one or more of these elements. 
When the fleshy envelope is stripped away, it is 
astonishing how alike these apparently divergent 
forms really are. In the whale the flesh unites the 
huge bones of the fingers and produces a broad, oar- 
like fin; in the tiger the nails become retractile 
talons ; in the bird some of the fingers are atrophied, 
while others are elongated to support the feathers 
which are to offer resistance to the air in flight ; in 
the horse the bones of the fingers are consolidated, 
and the united nails appear in the hoof. 

If there exists such perfect similarity in the bony 
structure of man to the animal world, the muscular 
system for which it furnishes support offers the same 
likeness. Trace any muscle in the human body from 
its origin to its termination, mark the points where 
it seizes the bones, the function it performs, and then 
dissect the most obscure or disreputable member of 
the vertebrate kingdom, and you will find the same 
muscle performing the same function. The talons of 
the tiger are extended and flexed by muscles, similar 
to those which give flexibility to the human hand, 
and the same elements are traceable in the ponder- 
ous paddle of the whale. 

More vital than the bony framework, or the mus- 
cles to which it gives support, is the nervous system, 
seemingly not only the central source of vital power, 
but the means of union and sympathetic relation of 
every cell and fiber of the entire body. 

The brain has been aptly compared to a central 
telegraphic office, and the nerves to the extended 



198 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

wires, which hold in communication and direct re- 
lation all the organs, and from which the functions 
of each are directed. 

The nervous system is the bridge which spans the 
chasm between matter and spirit, and the battle be- 
tween Materialism and Spiritualism must be fought 
not only with brain, but in the province of brain. 
However we may regard the spiritual being as an 
independent entity, when we study this subject from 
the physical side, we are compelled to accept the in- 
tricate blending of the influence of the brain on the 
expression of that being, during its connection there- 
with. The issue directly stated is this : Does the 
brain yield mind as a result of organic changes 
in its cells and libers, or is mind a manifestation 
through and by means of the brain of something 
beyond and superior ? 

It is admitted by profound thinkers that the brain 
and its functions is an unfathomed mystery, and 
that investigators must be content with what may 
be called secondary causes and effects. Phosphorus 
and sulphur may be essential for the activity of 
brain tissue, yet it is absurd to claim that a super- 
abundance of these elements wrote an Illiad, or 
solved the problem of gravitation. It is not phos- 
phorus, or carbon, or nitrogen, however vigorously 
oxidized, which pulsates in the emotions of friend- 
ship or love; that feels and thinks and knows ; that 
recollects the past, anticipates the future, and reaches 
out in infinite aspirations for perfection. 

The actions of thought on the brain, the effort com- 
pelling the body to serve the bidding of the spirit 
may consume this element and many others, as the 
movement of an engine consumes the coal and 
wastes the steam ; but the coal and the steam are 



PROTOPLASM. 199 

only the means whereby mind impresses itself on 
matter. 

The physicist studies the brain as one wholly un- 
acquainted with an engine would study that mach- 
ine, and mistaking it for a living being, might be 
supposed to do. He would observe its motion, and, 
weighing" the coal consumed and the products of 
combustion, would say that they appeared in steam, 
which after propelling the piston was waste. The 
design of the engine, the effect of these combinations 
and this waste, this observer would claim to be the 
guiding intelligence. And he would further argue 
that so much coal in the grate, so much water in the 
boiler and there appears an equivalent of intelli- 
gence, and the waste may be predetermined by 
chemical formulae. 

Until the threshold of the functional activity of 
the brain and the nervous system have been passed, 
conclusions should be modestly expressed. 

If it be claimed that man is a natural being, orig- 
inated and sustained by natural laws, that he came 
without miracle, then do we unite the margins of the 
human and animal kingdoms, and are satisfied with 
placing man at the head of the animal world. An in- 
terminable and unbroken series of beings extends in 
a gradual gradation downwards, until the organs by 
which the phenomena of life are manifested are lost 
one by one, the senses disappear, until we arrive at 
what has been aptly termed "protoplasm," not an 
(organized form, but simply organizable matter, or 
matter from which organic forms can be produced. 

If, in reviewing this chain of beings, slowly arising 
by constant evolution, we closely examine several 
of its consectuive links, we shall find that while each 
ascending link is apparently complete, yet it is only 
the germ out of which the next is evolved in super- 



200 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

ior forms. Each link is prophecy of future super- 
iority. The fulfillment of one age can be traced 
until man appears as the last term in the physical 
series. 

They who teach this doctrine of evolution, which is 
to life what the law of gravitation is to worlds, also 
teach that united with the doctrine of ■ " conservation 
of force," the hope of immortality becomes a dream. 
What a sham they make of creation ! What a tur- 
moil for no result ! Infinite ages of progress and 
evolution, during which elemental matter, by force 
of inherent laws, sought to individualize itself and 
incarnate its forces in living beings ; ages of struggle 
upwards from low to high, from sensitive to sen- 
tient, from sentient to intellectual, from zoophyte to 
man ! And now, having accomplished this, and 
given man exquisite susceptibility of thought, of 
love, of affection ; making him the last factor in the 
series, he is doomed to perish ! What is gained by 
this travail of the ages ? Would it not have been as 
well had the series stopped with the huge saurians of 
of the primeval slime, or the mastodon and mam- 
moth of the pre-historic times, as with the man. As * 
each factor in the series prophecies future forms, so 
does man read in the same light, prophecy-forms be- 
yond. They can not be in the line of greater physi- 
cal perfection, for in the days of Greece and Rome, 
man was as perfect physically, as is seen by their 
sculptures, as to-day. Ages ago, this exceeding 
beauty was attained. It cannot be in the evolution 
of a being superior to man, for as in each lower ani- 
mal imperfect organs or structures, or partially em- 
ployed functions, are improvable and perfected by 
succeeding forms, in man the architype is complete, 
and no partially developed organ indicates the possi- 
bility of future change. 



MAN A DUAL BEING. 201 

Progress having arrived at its limits with the body, 
changes its direction, and appears in the advance- 
ment of mind. Death closes the career of individu- 
ality, and we live only in thoughts — our selfhood is 
absorbed in the ocean of being. Mankind perfects 
as a whole, and the sighed -for millenium is coming 
bye-and-bye. 

Of what avail is it to us if future generations are 
wise and noble, if we pass into nonenity ? Of what 
avail to them to be wise and noble, if life is only the 
fleeting hour ? Not yet can we believe Nature to be 
such a sham — such a cruel failure. The spirit rebels 
against the supposition of its mortality. The body is 
its habilament. Shall the coat be claimed to be the 
entire man ? Shall the garments ignore the wearer ? 
This is the animal side of man. Physically com- 
posed of the same elements, and having passed 
through these innumerable changes, he is an epitome 
of the universe. As man was foreshadowed in re- 
motest ages as the crowning type in the series of or- 
ganic life, so man foreshadows superior excellence. 
Springing out of his physical perfectibility, arises a 
new world of spiritual wants and aspirations, unan- 
swered and unanswerable in mortal life . 

Man a Dual Being. — While Theology, Brahminical, 
Buddhistical or Christian, teaches that man is an 
incarnate spirit, independent of the physical body, 
created by miracle, supported by a succession of 
miracles, and saved by a miracle from eternal death, 
material science, as at present taught by its leading 
exponents, wholly ignores his spiritual life, and de- 
clares him to be a physical being only. It is not my 
purpose to reconcile these conflicting views. Truths 
never require reconciliation. They never conflict; 
and if the results of two different methods of inves- 



202 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

tigation are at variance, one or the other is in error, 
or both, perchance, and the only reconciliation is the 
elimination of that error. The egotisms of theology 
and the pride of science array their votaries in oppo- 
sition, while the truth remains unquestioned in the un- 
explored middle ground. Man is neither a spirit nor 
a body ; he is the intimate union of both. In and 
through his physical being, the spiritual nature is 
evolved from the forces of the elements and is ex- 
pressed. There is somewhat more enduring than 
the resultants of chemical unions, action and re- 
actions in his physical body. Beneath this organic 
construction is that which remains, to which it is the 
scaffolding which assists, while it conceals the de- 
velopment of the real edifice. 

Paul, the most profound thinker of air the founders 
of Christianity, very forcibly and clearly expresses 
this duality when he makes the distinction between 
' ' the celestial body " and the "terrestrial." In mor- 
tal life these are united, and death is simply their 
separation. His disciples have grossly misunder- 
stood and mistaught his explanation. The terres- 
trial body cannot inherit eternal life, which is the 
birthright of the celestial. Death is the severance 
of the cord which unites these bodies in the seem- 
ingly indivisible web of earth-life. The terrestrial 
returns to the elements from which it came; the 
celestial remains individualized. It is unusual for 
writers on science at the present day to quote the 
Bible in support of their theories ; but no author be- 
fore Paul's time or since has given a more complete 
philosophy of life, and a key wherewith to unlock 
the secrets of the grave. 

Definitions. — The comparison of terms has led to 
the strangest processes of reasoning, and the classi- 



PRE-EXISTENCE. 203 

fications in which some writers delight, have served 
as a means of intellectual gymnastics, rather than 
data for clear reasoning. In the threefold division 
of body, soul and spirit, by using the two last terms, 
at times as meaning something essentially distinct, 
and at others, as synonymous with intelligence, and 
each other; and again making soul and body the 
same, a most admirable means for the jugglery of 
disputation is furnished, which has not been left 
unused, and by which the discussion of this subject 
has been befogged. 

There is the physical body, and the spirit to which 
the manifestations of mind belong. The term soul 
has no meaning, except as synonymous with body 
or spirit, and hence is discarded in this discussion. 

Pre-existence. — It has been taught that the ego, 
the immortal part, is from God, and at death returns 
to God who gave it. The eternal existence in the 
past of spirits, is presupposed, and that they await 
the development of bodies for them to enter, and 
earth-lif e, therefore, to them is a probationary state. 
The history of this theory is of profound interest, as 
it is wrought into the tissue of received theology, 
and its beginning traced to the conjectures of primi- 
tive man. It ignores the rule of law, and makes the 
birth of every child a miracle. The ancient doc- 
trine of re-incarnation, lately revived, meets the 
same objection. A spirit, perfect in its individual- 
ity, through a germ becomes clad in flesh. It does 
not do this because the mortal state is preferable ; 
for the spirit constantly desires to escape from its 
thraldom. It is compelled by a direct mandate of 
God to undergo this metamorphosis as a punish- 
ment, and means of atonement. According to this 
view, the development of man becomes entirely dif- 



204 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

ferent from that of animals. There is no law, order 
or unity of organic forms. Creation is an ever- 
enacting miracle. When this scheme is referred to 
fixed laws in the spirit realm, the known causes 
acting in the physical world are but transferred to 
the spiritual, where they at once pass beyond recog- 
nition. 

It is needless to say that with such speculations, 
an explanation having any claim to scientific ac- 
curacy has nothing in common. 

Origin of Spirit. — If there is an immortal spirit, 
whether its duration be eternal or measured by 
time, as we can not go beyond the realm of law — 
by which we mean the fixed order of causation — 
it must date its beginning with that of the body. 
The history of the development of the germ is a 
correspondence of that of the spirit. If the parents 
have immortal spirits as well as mortal bodies, then 
while their physical bodies support the corporeal 
being, their spiritual natures must in an equal 
measure support the spirit of the fetus, and the 
growth of its dual nature be similar, both receiving 
nourishment from the mother. The two forms 
mature together; one pervading and being the exact 
copy of the other. 

Objections. — As the processes of life and that lower 
order of intelligence known as instinct, are mani- 
fested in animals, identically the same as they are 
in man, and by the wonderful interelationship ex- 
isting between all the members of the animal world, 
from protozoa to man, what is true of one must be 
true of all, it follows that if it is necessary to evoke 
the aid of the spirit for the explanation of the phen- 
emena connected with man, it is equally necessary 



THE KEYSTONE. 205 

in the case of animals. Granting this, the next step 
is to show the absurdity of the idea that all the 
infinitude of beings, from microbes to leviathans, 
have a life beyond the evening of their brief day. 
The issue is fairly stated, but the claim regarded 
as absurd is not made. All may have spirits, from 
the lowest to the highest, holding the same relations 
to the body in which it is gestated as the spirit of 
man holds to his physical form. That such should 
be the case is a necessity of the position taken by this 
work. It is not, however, held, nor is it necessary 
that it should be, that the spirit of animals is im- 
mortal, or exist after the death of the body. They 
have not attained the requisite development, which 
has been likened to an arch which requires the 
finish, by putting in place of the keystone before the 
staging on which it rests can be removed, leaving the 
arch permanent. If this staging is removed before the 
keystone is put in place, the entire structure falls in 
ruins. In man, the arch is completed. Yet, as the ani- 
mal merges into man through intermediate forms — 
and the infant knows less than the perfect animal — the 
line of demarkation is drawn with difficulty. It is 
like the boundary between the hill and its valley: 
both meet somewhere; but no one can say where 
the valley begins and the hill ends. A certain 
degree of development is essential, below which 
spirit cannot exist independently of the physical » 
body, and above which this is possible. Any theory 
which of necessity advocates the immortal life of 
animals as well as of man, fails by maintaining that 
which may readily be proved an absurdity. For if 
the intelligent dog or elephant have existence in the 
future, so may the fish, the mollusk, the monad, and 
even the speck of protoplasm, which loses itself in 
unorganic matter. This was put forth as an un- 



206 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

answerable objection to the immortality of the 
human spirit, for it was said one or the other horn 
of the dilemma must be taken ; for as there is no 
break in the chain of beings, between man and 
i animals, even to the monad, if a future life belongs 
to him, equally is it an inheritance of theirs; and 
if it be denied them, so must it be lost to him. In 
mental and spiritual attainment there is a gulf be- 
tween man and the animal world, vastly broader 
and more profound than is required to give him the 
inheritance of immortality which is also theirs. 

In time this gulf is as wide as from the present 
to several millions of years previous to the glacial 
period. Prof. Wallace is so astonished at the differ- 
ence between the brain of the most savage man 
and the highest animal, that he declares the theory 
of evolution, which he was first to promulgate, while 
it accounts for all the forms of life, here fails, and 
that man stands alone, the creature of another crea- 
tion. While he says that man ''May even have 
lived in the miocene or eocene period, when not a 
single mammal was identical in form with any ex- 
isting species,"' yet he does not place the origin of 
man at a sufficiently remote era in those receding 
aeons of time. 

In the primitive human being, thought began its 
conquest of the world, and the man of to-day repre- 
sents the accumulation of all experiences since 
his ancestors fought with cunning craft the huge 
megotherium, and disputed for supremacy of the 
tertiary forests with palseotherium, and other mon- 
sters of that age. 

In time, the gulf between him and the animal 
world is thus widened, and in size of brain, which 
measures as a psychic metre, the growth of the su- 
perior life, he is equally distant. It has been remarked 



A SPIRIT NOT NECESSARILY IMMORTAL. 207 

that the brain of the savage was so much larger 
•than the exigencies of his life demanded, that it 
was comparable to givin >• the wing of an eagle to 
a hedge sparrow, or the arm of a tiger to a mouse. 
Rightly read, this proves the vast duration of time 
during the differentiation of man from the animals 
below him. Psychic gro wth is marked by enlarge- 
ment of brain, and as long ago as the earliest pre- 
served geological traces of humanity are found, that 
organ had attained a size and form about equal to 
that of the present. Its attainments have become so 
great that it is difficult at present to compare its in- 
telligent manifestations with the instinctive desires 
of animals. The brains of all the lower types in cer- 
tain essentials of organic life are alike, but in the 
great lobes which, superimposed, mark the degrees 
of psychic life, the human being stand alone, and is 
human because of the mental qualities these lobes in- 
dicate. 

A Spirit Not Necessarily Immortal.— It has been 
said by a writer whose sensitive mind had received 
supernatural light: " Supposing the laws governing 
our spiritual natures operate similarly to those gov- 
erning our physical, we must naturally infer that the 
spiritual forms of all parts of life, may be by those 
laws interpreted. If the spirit of an animal has not 
intelligence to obey, and the spirit of man wilfully 
disobeys, will not the law eventually destroy such 
spirits ? The sentient notion that all ignorant and 
vile spirits, without aspirations for anything that is 
good,* who glory in wickedness and persist in the viola- 
tion of law, will become perfected I regard as false, 
for such must go on in a career which ends in anni- 
hilation." This writer errs in the cause he assigns 
for the continuous individuality of spiritual beings. 



208 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

He places it on moral grounds, making it depend- 
ent on moral aspirations, character and desires. 
Rather is it dependent on development as an en- 
tirety. The human being, after a certain stage of 
mental growth, receives a charter to eternal life 
which it can not annul, bearing with it all its in- 
finite consequences and responsibilities. 

In the "Arcana," Vol. II., 1864, this subject is thus 
treated : 

"A spirit is not necessarily immortal, but can be- 
come gradually extinguished, like a lamp burning for 
an indefinite time and then going out. Such is the 
condition of the lowest races of mankind. They ex- 
ist after death ; but with them there is no progress, 
no desire for the immortal state, and slowly, atom 
by atom, they are absorbed into the bosom of the 
universal spirit-essence as the spirit of the animal 
is immediately after death." 

If it be asked at what age the spirit of man retains 
its identity, it may be said in reply, that no certain 
date can be given, for that varies with the develop- 
ment of the parents. Is the idiot immortal ? The an- 
swer depends on the circumstances, the degree and 
cause of the idiocy. If the idiot is destitute of a ray 
of intelligence ; if it is only a voiceless, thoughtless 
being, the inference is not cheering, and the possi- 
bilities are largely in favor of its absorption into the 
bosom of the universal spirit-substance. 

A sensitive gave his testimony on this subject 
as it came under his observation while in a trance. 
Its value depends on the credence we give to the 
revelations received from that state. He said that 
while in the unconscious trance, or clairvoyant state, 
the dying animal and dying human being were both 
presented to him, and he saw the same processes 
go forward in both. The spirit of the animal floated 



A BEGINNING MUST HAVE AN END. 209 

above the dying body like a thin cloud ; and while 
he was expecting it to take form and identity, it 
dissolved and disappeared, just as a cloud would do 
in a summer sky. The spirit of a human being 
arose like a cloud in the same manner, took form 
and identity, and became a counterpart of the body 
it had left. This is not a speculative belief, but 
demonstrative by the revelations of trance. 

Must Not Immortality Reach Into the Past as 
well as Into the Future?— A far more potent objec- 
tion is made by the Metaphysician. To him the pre- 
ceding arguments that the spirit can not have existed 
prior to birth, and has a common, a cotemporary ori- 
gin with the physical body, is fatal to its existence 
after death. He says : Whatever has a beginning must 
have an end ; therefore, when it is asserted that the 
spirit of man is immortal, it follows that it must have 
always pre-existed ; had an endless past. This is a 
startling objection and held to be unanswerable, ex- 
cept by the hypothesis of pre-existence and re-incar- 
nation, which maintain that the spirit is an inde- 
structible entity, constantly rehabilitating itself in 
forms of flesh ; but this hypothesis is only a supposi- 
tion made in the childhood of the race to meet a 
doubt and objection. In an age of accurate thought 
it seems an anachronism. If we accept the doctrine of 
f evolution — and, as the immediate explanation of the 
phenomena of living beings, it is the only, and a 
complete explanation — then we must also receive as 
true the corollary that instinct and intelligence are 
evolved out of the transformations of living beings, 
and that individualized spirit, if there be such an en- 
tity, must be the last link in the vast organic series 
from which it has sprung into being. In other words, 



310 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

with an indeterminable future it has had a determin- 
able past. If the spirit has existed for infinite time 
before its incarnation in this life, it has had infinite 
opportunity for progress, and, logically, should have 
attained perfection. Not only should, but must have 
become perfect. It is readily observed that the fact 
of its imperfection necessitates a beginning, and 
the degree of its imperfection shows the nearness or 
remoteness of its starting point. If it be held that 
this apparent imperfection is the resultant of the 
spirit's connection with matter, it must be remem- 
bered that the theory of pre-existence has for its 
object to account for the evils of this life, and 
perfected spiritual beings, such as all must be after 
an infinite past, would have no need of incarnation 
to attain purity or excellence already theirs; and 
should they enter physical bodies, as spirits, accord- 
ing to this doctrine, they would not be contaminated 
or degraded by their contact with earth and earth- 
life, but would glorify it. 

With the physical form given to offspring by their 
parents is also given spiritual entity which lives after 
the decay of that body, an independent being, the 
center of multitudinous forces. 

Is this visionary ? Lately an eminent physician has 
claimed that under proper conditions physical life 
might be indefinitely prolonged, and man be able to 
live in the body forever. All that is essential is the 
preservation of the equilibrium between the forces of 
renovation and decay. If this could be maintained, 
life would be prolonged, perhaps to the end of time, 
and an immortal oak or lion be as possible as an im- 
mortal man ; but with the gross forms of matter this 
can not be maintained. The forces of growth and 
renovation are in excess until the full tide of matur- 
ity is reached, and then decay is in excess. 



HOW SHALL WE PASS THE ABYSS* 211 

There is not enough material furnished to replace 
the waste of the body, and it wears out, when death 
must f ollow. It is then that a new entity becomes re- 
cognizable. The material has become spiritual. 
Such an immortality at best would be not only unde- 
sirable, but unendurable amidst the changing scenes 
and vicissitudes of material life. Only within the re- 
fined spiritual realm can we expect to find the per- 
fection we seek. It is a new province, subject to 
new conditions and new laws. There is seemingly 
an impassable gulf between matter and spirit, yet we 
shall find it possible to throw an arch across. Nature 
loves such blank spaces ; she loves the black bars in 
the spectrum as well as the light. Between the tad- 
pole and the frog there is a chasm which, unless the 
change had been observed, would be deemed impos- 
sible. Between the caterpillar and the butterfly; the 
worm eating rough herbage and the gaudy winged 
creature floating like a wind-blown leaf from flower 
to flower, the contrast is even greater. 

How shall we pass the abyss between matter and 
spirit ? More correctly, how shall we look beyond 
the dead physical body to the individualized spirit, 
and account to the satisfaction of science for the 
maintenance of immortal individuality from the 
wreck of organization brought to its most perfected 
state ? While the animal has a similar organization, 
in its way, and compared to its environment as per- 
fect, why is it that the claim is made that the in- 
dividuality of the animal is lost at death while 
that of man is preserved ? These are all vital ques- 
tions, and rest on the logical affirmation that what- 
ever has a beginning must have an end. If man 
has a spirit, the objector affirms that animals, too, 
must have one. There is no sharp break in the series, 
and hence no stopping point from the highest 



212 TEE IMMORTAL STATE. 

to the lowest, and, consequently, the primitive 
amoeba, and protoplasmic cell must have an immortal 
spirit. This, by reductio ad absurdum, destroys the 
affirmation of the immortality of the highest as well 
as the lowest. 

We may regard the physical body as the scaffold- 
ing, and when it fails, the incomplete arch of intelli- 
gence built thereon falls with it ; but this arch be- 
comes more and more perfect, until in man it is 
perfected ; and when the physical platform by which 
it has been constructed falls at death, the arch re- 
mains. This is an illustration of the idea, and not 
produced as evidence. For this evidence we must 
consider the more abstruse doctrines of force and its 
relation to matter. If we go back to the beginning, 
to the primal chaos, we find visible matter and in- 
visible force. We may take one step further and 
find force only, regarding matter as the form of its 
manifestation. This, however, is not an essential 
admission in this discussion. 

This force is the first revealment of an intelligent, 
ever active, persistent energy, which pulsates through 
the universe. What lies back of it ; from whence it 
springs, we may not know. It is unknown, though 
perhaps, not unknowable. 

As we can only recognize Force as Motion, and 
motion only in connection with physical matter, our 
investigation must begin with the emergence of that 
Force as the moving energy of the cosmic world- 
vapor. In this expression with the primal elements, 
unconditioned, its tendency is to move in direct 
lines. This is illustrated in crystallization which may 
be called the first mainf estation of life — the dynamic 
force of life. This force, which as seen in the for- 
mation and revolution of worlds, is vorticle ; in the 
vegetable kingdom it becomes spiral, and more and 



FORCE AS MOTION. 



213 





more circular as it ascends through the animal king- 
dom to its higher forms, and in man becomes com- 
pletely so. This statement will be better understood 
by the accompanying diagram. 

The straight line a, represents primary 
force as manifested in the world-cloud, 
or nebukus vapor of the " beginning." 
It was this force that directed every 
atom to the common center of the cos- 
mic mass. If its history be traced, it 
will be found that the motion of the 
atom starting on a straight line for the 
center is deflected by the resistance of 
the crowding atoms, and approaches the 
center by a parabolic curve. In other 
words, the cosmic cloud would form a 
vortex like a whirlpool, and the rotatory 
motion developed would, before the ac- 
cumulation of any great mass at the 
center, prevent further aggregation; 
and the rotating belts would, after con- 
densation into worlds, continue to re- 
volve in spiral circles which, because of 
the masses not being homogenous, would 
correct their variations by spiral orbits 
which often reaching a minimum dis- 
tance from the center, retrace them- 
selves by the worlds traveling a spiral 
orbit that becomes constantly larger, 
until a maximum of distance had been gained. This 
explanation of planetary motions has really no con- 
nection with the present discussion, except as it 
illustrates the parallel between the circle gained by 
individualized masses, and the circle gained by in- 
dividualized spirit. 

The line of force directly acting, is the dynamic 




Diagram of the 
Individualization 
of Force. 



214 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

energy of matter. It passes into the world of life 
in an ascending spiral, that at each ascension, in- 
stead of completing itself, rises to a higher degree. 
The spirals at b represent the life of plants; and 
those at * animal life, now termed vital energy or 
vital force. There is incompleteness, and the force 
ever ascends to a higher form. At d the spiral be- 
comes a circle. The evolnting or individualizing 
energy returns within its orbit, and instead of ex- 
tending to higher forms, seeks the perfection of the 
human being. If, now, the inflowing forces repre. 
sented by the dotted line c, be cut off, the individual- 
ization of the product of that force is complete. It 
stands alone. The orbit of the forces of Its rotation 
is fixed by the indestructible. As in the planetary 
orbit, caused by an oscillation between extremes, 
there will be variations, but a constant return to 
the point of departure. The cosmic energy of force 
having ascended through this pathway becomes in- 
dividualized, as at d, and death severing the bond 
at c, the spirit as the centerstance of force becomes 
as at e, entirely detached from the stream of living 
beings. The force that apparently had a beginning, 
at least such to our consciousness, has by the cumu- 
lative processes of life embodied all that is valuable, 
and is enabled to exist alone ; returning forever 
within itself, maintaining a perfect equilibrium be- 
tween the sentient intellectual and moral natures it 
has acquired. It is the focus of these. There is no 
end to the individualized force in this direction ; 
in other words, spirit is immortal. It follows that 
vegetable and animal types along the spiral repre- 
sent incompleteness to such an extent as to forbid 
existence after detachment from the impelling cur- 
rent. This can only be attained by development 
carried to a certain degree, below which the force 



AFTER DEATH. 215 

must disappear with the organization which mani- 
fests it. 

Death. — Death is the separation of the spirit and 
the physical body ; and as the former carries with 
it all that enters into the individuality, the self -hood, 
there can be no change in that individuality. In 
the processes of evolution, death is as natural as 
birth — one is entrance into the earthly life ; one de- 
parture from it to a higher sphere of activity. Ever 
is it as of old: The angel of the sepulchre is the 
angel of the resurrection. 

After Death. — The student calmly surveying the 
pathway of evolution, seeing constantly in one age 
the prophecy of ages that follow; reminded by every 
form of life, of a striving to realize an ideal, and in 
man, finally, as the highest work of creative energy, 
finds that ideal type of physical beauty, and adapt- 
ation to the demands of mind, realizes that short of 
this last crowning work the plan is incomplete, and 
a failure. The line of advance to man is direct and 
continuous. He is the perfect fruitage of the Tree 
of Life. Having reached the perfection of his phy- 
sical form, progress changes in direction to the per- 
fection of his intellectual and moral being. In this 
direction it is never completed during the brief 
years of mortal life ; but transposed to an existence 
after death, the infinitude of years is equal to the, 
infinite possible advancement; for as no one can' 
fathom the centuries of the future, no one can fix 
the boundary lines circumscribing mental attain- 
ment. After death the celestial being holds fast to 
all that marked its individuality in earth-life — its 
loves, affections, desires, culture, attainments, its 
fears — to begin there where it leaves off here, with 
new environments and happier methods. 



216 THE IMMORTAL STATE. 

It will find belief the rags of the beggar, conceal- 
ing the one bright reality, that immortal life is an 
inheritance, governed by laws as fixed as those of 
the physical world. 

Beyond this, in earth life we can but darkly under- 
stand. We have words to convey ideas of things 
well known to us — of lights seen, sounds heard, of 
tastes, odors and sensations ; but mortal senses have 
not experienced, can not experience, the sensations 
of this higher life, and so there are no words to con- 
vey the sensations or thoughts awakened. 

True, there is a correspondence, such as Sweden- 
borg attempted to express, but failed because of 
the limitations of language. He was, like every 
one who attempts this task, with ideas formed in 
the idiom of one language, attempting to express 
them in a foreign tongue, which has no suitable 
words. There are barbarous languages, with vocab- 
ularies of scarcely one thousand words, yet capable 
of expressing fully the thoughts of those who use 
them. It would be impossible to translate the com. 
plex thoughts of civilized man into such forms of 
speech, much less the impressions and thoughts of 
the celestial life. 

If a butterfly, endowed with language to express 
the beauties of the broad summer landscape, the 
soft winds, the melting clouds, the fragrance and 
nectar of flowers, should return to the old bitter 
herbage, where its hairy, uncouth relatives were 
feeding on acrid leaves, and spreading its brilliant 
wings to catch the sunlight, should attempt to re- 
late the wonders of the life that was its own, how 
little would they understand, how sadly would they 
misconstrue his meaning. 

For them there has been no experience of waft- 
ing winds ; no sensation of flying ; nor of sweet nee- 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 217 

tar food, or perfume and brilliant color, and of these 
no words held in common could convey any 
meaning. 

For the full knowledge of that higher life we 
must wait. And it is well: for to know earth-life 
in its completeness is enough, and more, for its 
short years. As this life is the vestibule to the next, 
so a true knowledge of it is of priceless value to ad- 
vancement there, and its culture, its moral growth, 
its spiritual excellence, are treasures laid up in 
heaven, and this is all that the freed spirit can 
carry with it in its transition. . 



Personal Experience — Intelligence 
from the Sphere of Light. 



It is difficult to prevent the discussion of Psychic 
questions from assuming more or less a religious 
aspect. The reason for this is that all systems of re- 
ligion are based on Spiritual existence, and from 
views of that life, true or false, draw their vital sus- 
tainance. The moment it dawns upon the mind of 
an investigator, that in the facts and laws which 
come under his observation there are expressed forces 
unknown to the physicist ; that beyond, dimly seen, 
there is an intimation of intelligent, yet impalpable 
beings, he is conscious of his own high destiny, and 
the necessity of conforming mortal life to it. 

The inquiry of the student becomes the seed-bed 
for the propagation of religious thought. Herein this 



218 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

domain is unlike all others, for the outcome of re- 
search within its limits, is the last fruitage of Ethical 
Systems. 

Imperfect understanding, as that of the savage, 
blindly feeling without comprehending, yields the 
rank growth of superstition; while scientific and 
philosophic investigation yield the most refined 
morality. 

The preceding pages show the important part the 
sensitive holds in the manifestations and study of 
psychic phenomena. The true position of the psy- 
chic individual is not appreciated, even by those who 
have given the subject much attention. 

While in the preceding discussions I have spoken in 
the impersonal mode, I wish to add my testimony 
from years of experience, as a sensitive. I do this 
because it forms a somewhat necessary preface to 
the narrative which follows. 

The mass of mankind understand the delicacy of 
the conditions which go to make up the sensitive 
subject ; of the acuteness with which the nervous 
system is strung ; its keen susceptibility to pain and 
pleasure, about as well as the illiterate boor compre- 
hends the chemical tension of the plate in the camera 
or the subtile ways of electricity. To be a sensitive 
is to have at times the light of heaven in the heart, 
and at others the darkness of despair. A thousand 
influences are always acting, and the brain of the 
sensitive receives them all, trembles to their vibra- 
tions, and finds resistance to them an effort most 
exhaustive of vitality. 

In this state of tension, disagreeable objects, oppos- 
ing words, or antagonisms which ordinarily would 
pass unf elt and unnoticed, strike with rude hand, and 
give excruciating torture. The presence of an ob- 
ject or person may be sufficient to antagonize or 



JOTS AND TRIALS OF A SENSITIVE. 219 

destroy all etherial influences. I know of nothing 
that may be compared with the acute depression 
of the mind after such experiences, which corre- 
sponds to the preceding exaltation. While the sen- 
sitive is receiving a flood of inspiration he breaths 
an atmosphere of delight, and lives in an ideal world. 
Earth and its cares sink out of memory, and the 
mind is ennobled and purified. When the inspira- 
tion departs, the rosy light fades out of the spiritual 
vision, and the mortal eyes open to the cold, gray 
rays of earth-life. How drear and sordidly selfish, 
poor and unprofitable existence seems to him then. 

After the flood of inspiration comes its ebb; the 
valley of despond, after the heights of Alpine splen- 
dor. Melancholy and depression of spiritual energy 
may produce physical disturbance, which runs its 
swift course to death. Recognizing these facts, the 
position of the sensitive can not be regarded as desir- 
able, unless the laws of the sensitive state are well 
known, and the subject learns to protect himself 
against injurious and painful conditions ; even if he 
does this unexpectedly, conditions will arise and con- 
front him, for those who are his nearest and dear- 
est friends know nothing about the acuteness of his 
feelings, and may unconciously produce the very 
effects they seek to avoid. 

The sensitive becomes painfully conscious of a 
double life, for the psychic is so different from 
the common state, that the mind receives im- 
pressions as from two distinct conditions of exist- 
ence. One is physical, held in common with the 
brutes, with physical enjoyments and desires for eat- 
ing, drinking, and the passions ; the other is the 
psychical, which lives above and beyond the cares of 
life, and dwells in an ideal realm of purity. One is 
the night and the other the day. In order to dwell 



220 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

on earth these two lives must be united. The physi- 
cal body has its imperative needs, which must be 
satisfied, as the just condition of spiritual growth. 
There is less imperative demand for spiritual sus- 
tenance. So soon as the body has been supplied, men- 
tal lethargy supervenes, and desires to tyrannize: 
physical life overlaps and conceals the spiritual, 
and men live the life of beasts. At other times the 
spiritual gains such complete ascendency that this 
world is forgotten in a blaze of ideality. An equi- 
librium between these states is the most desirable, 
but difficult to maintain. 

Sensitiveness is a faculty common to mankind 
and capable of cultivation. Now that we have just 
entered the vestibule of the temple of Psychic 
Science, and are beginning to learn its principles we 
may hope for brilliant results. Nor will the duties of 
this life be neglected because of the approach to an- 
other. To the belief that mortal life is all that can 
be attended to here, and "that the earth is wanted 
here, and not in the clouds," the celestial sense would 
reply: " We too want the earth here, and not in the 
clouds, but we want the clouds also." We want the 
clouds to distill the soft dew, and bear on their broad 
shoulders the life-giving rain for the grass and grain, 
to slake the thirst of the herds and flocks ; we 
want the clouds to spread their protecting mantle 
over the fields against the scorching sun of summer ; 
and we want them to bring the crystal snows to pro- 
tect the fields in winter. We want the clouds to 
beautify the sky, and reflect in loveliness the rays of 
the rising and setting sun. Half the beauty of the 
world would be gone without the clouds, which lift 
the soul on wings of aspiration. We rejoice that 
there are clouds, and while the earth is good enough 
for the mortal man, in the clouds there is a grander 



SPIRITUAL LIFE IS UNIVERSAL. 221 

reality. If it were otherwise, if the human heart 
were given its intense longings, its exquisite sensi- 
bility, its delicate cords responsive to every touch of 
feeling only to be torn and lacerated at the grave of 
the loved, we would scorn the pitiable earth, despise 
the sham called life, hate the force called love, and 
believe that there is neither benevolence, wisdom, nor 
intelligence in the Universe. It is the clouds that 
give value to the earth ; without them it would only 
be a parched and thirsty desert. There are clouds, 
and by them the spirit is exalted to the contempla- 
tion of infinite realities. 

Without the ever-present consciousness of eternal 
being, religion would be impossible, and there could 
be no ideal of excellence superior to the gratifica- 
tions of the hour. But man feels the aspirations for a 
superior life, a soaring out of and above the physical 
senses ; he feels the promptings of duty, of right, of 
justice and truth, outwrought from his innermost 
being. The pleasures of the time are cast away; 
selfishness yields to unselfishness; and the spirit, 
amid pain, apparent loss, and the scorn of its fel- 
lows, proves its kinship to the immutable and ideal. 
Such is the true spiritual life: The outgrowth of 
spiritual science, which makes morality a birthright, 
and its expression in character a consequence of 
obedience to the laws of its being. 

Spiritual life is universal and infinite. It is the 
answer, to our hopes, desires and abiding faith. 
Whence come they ? They are the mutual expres- 
sion of our inner natures. As the flower expands, its 
petals bending to the rays of the sun, so we turn to 
the spiritual sun, and only in the warmth of its in- 
vigorating rays expand into completeness. As the 
foulest slime of the sewer, when exposed to the light, 
casts down all stains, and sparkles in the crystal 



222 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

waves, so humanity in the light of spiritual truth is 
purified and freed from stains. Hope, faith, desire, 
the poetry of the present, are the prophecy of the 
future ! Their voice proclaims the esoteric wisdom 
which is wiser than all books ; for are not all books 
children of the mind ? Has any thing ever been writ- 
ten that no one knew ? As the mind is the receiver, 
so is it the radiator. It cannot receive what it has not 
the ability to throw out. It understands because it 
is the sum of all the elements and forces of the uni- 
verse. It is akin to the titanic energies which hold 
the revolving suns and worlds in the hollow of their 
hands, and can read the ritual of the flashing stars. 

Infinity it has never exhausted, it can never ex- 
haust itself. Books are imperfect stutterings of its 
eternal consciousness. It is as superior to them as 
the master to his sketch, the sculptor to his clay, the 
builder to the engine that feebly embodies in brass 
and steel his ideas, which alone are perfect. We 
are immortal, and hope and desire tell us the won- 
drous tale of an unending future. We cannot cast 
aside its awful responsibilities, escape its duties, or 
be deprived of its grand possibilities. The very 
name, Immortality, carries with it the ideas of end- 
less progress, justice, liberty, love, purity, holiness, 
power and beauty. 

Those who have followed the line of thought in 
these pages will have no difficulty in admitting the 
possibility, at least on special occasions, of spirit 
communication They, in fact, will recognize it as 
a necessity. If those who have passed through 
death's portals should return, they might find 
even the most sensitive unable to transmit their 
thoughts, except in a most rudimentary manner. 

The following narrative is an attempt of a celes- 
tial being to convey by words a conception of 



A DEATH S'CENE. 223 

its glorious life. While, in part, the sketch must 
be taken allegorically, mainly it is a true picture. 
The communication came from our mother, Jane A. 
Rood, and the remarkable facts connected with her 
death are correctly stated. I more minutely describe 
the entrance into that state wherein the message 
was received, because it illustrates the preceding 
discussions, and the communication emphasizes and 
makes plain many points which have remained un- 
approachable. 

The first stages were like sinking into peaceful 
slumber, and I felt the scenes of earth melt out of 
consciousness, while a strange exhilaration, peace- 
ful and delightful, came over me. There were chang- 
ing flashes of color, rivaling the rainbow, coming 
and going in receding circles, and then a misty 
brightness, out of which slowly came, as though 
the cloudiness were material in the hands of an 
artist, a form which I recognized as our mother's. 
A score or more of years had passed since the fate- 
ful hour when we were gathered around her couch, 
too distressed to weep, and awed by the presence of 
the silent messenger. Wasted by serious sickness, 
she was at last free from pain, and a smile of joy 
came over her pale face when she knew it was soon 
to be over. We thought her dead, for her eyes 
closed and her breath ceased, when she repeated 
with a voice sweet as music : 

"Bright spirits await to welcome me home, 
To that blissful region where you, too, may come ; 
Weep not, for our parting is only to sight, 
Our spirits may still the more closely unite. 

" Perform well each day the task which to you 
Is allotted, and murmur not if you must do 
What now seemeth hardship, for soon you will prove 
'Tis labor of kindness, an action of love." 



224 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

Then her eyes closed again, and her features 
changed into a glad smile. There was now no mistak- 
ing the signs, and we went to our appointed tasks, 
feeling that it would be sacrilege to weep in the 
presence of such a triumph over death. We felt 
that we had been permitted to catch a glimpse of an 
unseen reality. As travelers in mountain regions 
are delighted after the valley is wrapped in twilight 
by glimpses of the crest of some tall mountain catch- 
ing the rays of the sun, and reflecting its glory, so 
to us it seemed that the departing spirit had caught 
a glimpse of the light of its new life, and reflected 
a smile on the face of the body it was leaving. 

How beautiful she was with the graces of youth, 
and the complete and perfected charms of maturity. 
No wrinkles were on her brow, no marks of care, 
anxiety or pain ; she was ideal in excellence. 

What has happened to you, mother? How are 
you the same and yet not the same ? 

The response : I have returned to my youth, and 
have brought my experience with me. I scarcely 
realize how many years have passed. Twenty-five, do 
you say ? It seems to me not as many days ; and 
yet, let me recount. There has been a flood of 
events, and my recollection of the last time you saw 
me has grown dim. We count not time by years, 
but by accomplishments ; by what we do and gain 
in thought. I am pained by the memory of the 
olden time. You say it was twenty-five years or more 
ago ! As I come again in contact with earth, my 
sickness and sufferings are recalled. How weary and 
worn I became ! How I longed for the end ! The 
love you all bore me and my love for you was the 
only cord which bound me to life, and as I ap- 
proached the end I forgot even that. How much I 
suffered that day I cannot tell, but at last I was 



ENTERING HEAVEN. 225 

at peace. The terrible struggle between flesh and 
spirit was done, and the latter rested. I thought I 
would sleep, and yet it was not sleep. It was a 
repose of all living functions, and yet my mind was 
in full activity. For a time I heard all that was said 
by those who were in the room ; but soon I became so 
absorbed in the thoughts which flowed on my mind 
that I lost consciousness of everything else. Oh ! 
it was such a delicious sense of comfort and of rest ! 
I was so very weary ; I had been so tortured by pain 
that to be free was indescribable happiness. I had 
heard them say I was dying, and I expected the 
dread moment with foreboding. It surely must soon 
come, yet I thought I had not reached it. The 
darkness began to lighten, and I thought the morn 
was breaking. An intense thrill of delight filled 
my being, and the light grew stronger. I contin- 
ued to rest, and a new strength came to me. I 
am getting well again, I thought, and, perhaps, 
when the morning comes I shall surprise my friends 
and children by at once arising from my couch. 
The light streamed in with a soft and a refreshing 
warmth. There were no walls to prevent its pas- 
sage. I was floating in a cloud of light, borne 
gently and softly as a weary child on its mother's 
breast. Then out of the light, as though it had 
formed into shape and substance, I saw three friends, 
long since dead, and my own blessed mother. To 
meet them did not appear strange to me, yet I 
knew they were not of earth. When they came 
around me, taking my hands in theirs, and caress- 
ing my forehead, I was surprised at their beauty, 
and the sweetness of their expression. They read 
my thoughts, and answered : 

" Yes, truly we are of the dead ; and you will find 
that dying means to live." 



226 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

" I thought I was dying; they told me so," I said, 
laughing at the absurdity. "But I have become 
well, never so well since a child. It is a joy to 
breathe and feel the fresh life come coursing through 
my veins. But why do you smile ? " I asked. They 
replied: " Do you not know that y our new life means 
death ? How much you have to learn, dear sister." 

"Yes, I have everything to learn ; my life has 
been full of cares." 

" They have been for others/' was replied. "And 
such are treasures in heaven. For us to learn is not 
labor. If we bring ourselves into the proper condi- 
tion of receptivity, knowledge flows into our minds. 
There is no effort, no wearisome study. We may 
know all that the highest intelligence knows if we 
are in the right condition." 

" I must bring myself at once into that condition," 
I replied, " for there is need." 

"Be not in haste, our sister," said they gently; 
" there is time, and you must have repose. The pain 
you have endured reflects on your spirit, and you 
have not yet recovered." 

"I infer from your words that I have met the 
change I so feared," I said again, smiling at the ab- 
surdity of the idea. " When did I pass the limits of 
earth life, and why do I lose sight of my friends ?" 

"You need have no more dread," replied my dar- 
ling mother. " You do not see them because we are 
far away from them. It would not be well for you 
to remain and witness their sorrow. We have taken 
you away, that you may first recover and grow 
strong." 

As I felt the swift motion, which I had not before 
observed, for it had been to me the gentle rock of 
sustaining arms, I asked: "Am I to be taken away 
so far I can not return ? " 



FIRST SENSATIONS. 22 r , 

" Fear not, child," she replied in her old way, 
" fear not, for whatever we justly demand is grant- 
ed to us. The craving of the heart is not left un- 
answered. Presently it will all be made plain to 
you." 

We were drawn onward as by the tide of a great 
river, and I saw countless others coming and going, 
as though on swift errands. Then we paused on an 
eminence, overlooking a sea of amethyst on our 
right, and a vast plain on our left. The sky was 
softest purple, and the light fell with indescribable 
mellowness over all — there was happiness in the air, 
and those we greeted were radiant. No words can 
describe what I saw, or my rapidly changing emo- 
tions. There is nothing on earth with which to com- 
pare the landscape. The softest earthly colors are 
opaque in comparison, and the clearest sky a murky 
cloud. Overcome, I wept for joy, and my companions 
wept with me. 

"Oh!" exclaimed one, "how sweet to know that 
this is the reality; no more doubts, nor forebodings; 
no more fears, nor distress ; a life that of itself is the 
highest pleasure, and yields us heaven." 

I started at the word, for it recalled a tide of be- 
liefs : " Heaven ! When are we to go there ? Where 
is it and what must we do to go there ?" 

" Be not impatient, dear sister ; we are in heaven 
already. Where happiness is, there is heaven. 
Heaven is activity. It is the deed of kindness, the 
pure loving thought that makes heavens." 

"What is its first principle?" I queried, "for I 
am weak and undeserving." 

" Doing for others is the full measure of its law. 
This is the angel code from which every trace of self- 
ishness has been weeded out. To do for others brings 
gain. The pure and noble angels bending from their 



328 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

spheres of light, labor for others in self-forgetful- 
ness. When man so far forgets his selfishness as to 
sacrifice himself for others, he exalts himself in angel- 
life. To work for self is no better nor worse than the 
brute world, from worm to elephant, and is devoid 
of immortal gain," 

How delighted I was at these words. The dross of 
the world was rapidly disappearing. The sphere of 
my earthly labor, which to me seemed so narrow, 
widened. I had been sympathetic with those who 
suffered, and to those weaker than myself I had 
given a helping hand. Little things of no account 
at the time, so humble and narrow had been my life, 
now had a new meaning. 

My companions smiled as they read my thoughts, 
and one responded: " Dear sister, your weakness 
was your strength. It will be no effort for you to 
do as you have always done. They who can be 
unselfish under the coarse influences of earthly life, 
how grand must be their career under the purer 
conditions which here prevail." 

As we conversed there came one from another 
group, tall, beautiful and radiant with light, and 
with his companion more exquisitely beautiful than 
himself. They invited us, and we went to their 
abode. " How beautiful you are," I exclaimed in- 
voluntarily to her. 

" I am glad ;" she replied, " for to be truly beauti- 
ful means that the thoughts are right and true, 
for they mold the features and through them gain 
expression ; but it requires time, a great length of 
time." 

"How long have you been here?" I ventured 
to ask. 

" Many hundred years. I scarcely know how 
long." 



A MISER SPIRIT. 229 

" And you grow not old here ? " 
"We grow not old. The spirit knows not age. 
It is not limited by duration. It is an eternal now, 
concentrating the past and awaiting the future." 

I had not seen myself since the change. I put 
my hand to my face ; it was smooth and unwrinkled. 
A happy ripple of laughter came from my com- 
panions. He who had come for us said: "Dear 
sister, you left those with your body. The pure 
spirit has not the wrinkles of care or of age." 

I looked at him as he spoke and my attention 
was called to his robe. I had not thought of 
this subject before. I had been so eagerly watch- 
ing the faces of my companions, I had not thought 
of their garments, or of my own. What a change ! 
What was this raiment? I can not describe it. 
It was a drapery as of a cloud, and its color de- 
pended on the spiritual condition of the wearer. 
I was glad that mine was azure, for that was the 
color of my companion's, and thus I knew I was 
like them. What was it ? A cloud or woven light ? 
It fell around me soft and warm, and with a lux- 
urious coolness contrasting with the burning of 
the fever I had so recently escaped. How different 
from the roughness of the old garments was this 
fleecy robe, glinting and reflecting the light. 

As we conversed, there came a spirit, who paused 
in front of us, dark and sullen. His raiment was 
sombre and grim, like his thoughts. "Can you tell 
me where heaven is?" he grumbled, "I paid a 
preacher to gain it for me, and now having lost all 
else, I want that." 

"Poor brother," replied the elder, "you search for 
what you can never find outside of yourself." 

"You are a deceiver!" he muttered as he fled 
away. 



230 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

The elder brother gazed after him sadly, and turn- 
ing said : " On earth he was a miser, and who can 
count the years before his regeneration ? He sought 
wealth, trusting to others his religious and moral 
culture. The recording angel has written against 
, his name not one charity, not one unselfish deed. He 
now must wander in self -torment, seeking and find- 
ing not." 

"Was he of consequence on earth?" I asked, for 
he was proud and haughty in his degradation. 

" Thousands trembled at his beck, for he had made 
them dependents and slaves. He had vast riches, 
houses and lands, mortgages and deeds. He was 
wise in getting wealth; but here mortgages and 
deeds are unknown, and he becomes the least in the 
kingdom ; morally idiotic, mentally dwarfed, and a 
pitiable object of our compassion." 

" How long before he will gain the light ?" 

"Ah! who but God can tell !" sighed my instruc- 
tor. "Who can tell? Centuries may go by. He 
must first learn to ask ; first learn humility and his 
mistakes. Then some kind angels will attempt his 
education. They will lead him out of his mental 
selfishness, and he will begin as a child in the old life. 
His task will be difficult because he can not enter 
the sphere of receptivity, as we are able to do, and 
thus absorb knowledge from others. His nature 
must first change, and complete regeneration be 
accomplished." 

The coming of this pitiable one brought a wave 
of sadness over us, but it passed, and the sun was 
more gladsome after breaking from the clouds. I 
had rested in delightful sleep • I do not know how 
often, and the old life was like a dream. It was not 
possible I had been sick, for I was so strong, so glad- 
some in my strength, and activity was a delight. My 



TO DESIRE IS TO LEARN. 231 

mind broadened. Contact with my companions gave 
me enlarged ideas. To think was to learn ; to wish 
was to know. I was able to look beyond the effect 
to the cause. I could read the law in the result. 
Every day brought grander views, and my mental 
horizon expanded. Even in this larger growth I 
found rest. The faculties, dwarfed and starved in 
the old time, called for activity. The weariness of 
the body I was leaving behind me. How lovingly 
my companions would surround me with conditions 
of repose. How they gave me fullness of life, and 
drew to me those who would reveal the knowledge 
it was my desire to learn ! 

Then suddenly one evening I felt an earthward 
impulse. What power drew me thitherward ? 

" Is our sister disturbed ? " asked my gentle com- 
panion. 

" Oh ! so disturbed ! I have been selfish in my new 
joy, and how could I have been so forgetful ; so un- 
natural ? My husband and babe ; my son and 
daughter weeping ; and I have not thought of 
them ! " 

I wept, and my companion folded her arm around 
me and gently said : " You have been under our con- 
trol, and are not responsible. To have been subject to 
the griefs of those you left, would have been painful 
and useless. You are now able to bear a full know- 
ledge, you feel that of your family and friends. I 
will go with you, and you will find what I tell you is 
true, and you will bless us for our thoughtful- 
ness." 

We were poised, as it were, over a promontory be. 
yond which the earth hung in space, as the full moon 
in a summer sky. Beyond were the stars. I was 
aghast at the journey, and fearful of the abyss which 
seemed deep as infinitude. While I trembled it was 



232 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

passed. I was in my old home. A great flood of 
human memories came over me. How I loved the 
dear familiar walls, the chairs, the glowing fire and, 
more than all, the family group, My husband sit- 
ting with his head bowed in his hand, my daughter 
performing the tasks that had been mine ; my little 
boy and girl at play ; the babe asleep. There were 
tears in my eyes as I turned to my companion for 
strength to bear : Did I not leave my body ? Was 
there not a funeral ? Why is it so quiet if I have not 
truly passed the ordeal ? 

" Listen," said my companion, supporting me. 
" Listen" It was in October when you passed away. 
The bright foliage of the trees, then burning in scar- 
let and gold, had been blown away by the blasts of 
winter, and the snow covered the earth with its icy 
shroud. All you think of has been done. It is fin- 
ished. Were you to go to the churchyard you would 
find a mound by the side of relatives gone before." 

It was so unreal and absurd that I was bewildered, 
and laughed at my misunderstanding, and wept the 
next moment when I saw my family. I went to 
my husband and placed my hand on his head and 
called him by name, I called with all my strength to 
learn that my lips gave no sound to his ear, and that 
my touch was imperceptible. Then I turned to my 
daughter and threw my arms despairingly around 
her. She was singing a song we had sung together, 
and continued not heeding my embrace. Oh ! how 
keen my grief when I found I was not known in my 
own old home. I, who had come from such a distance, 
my heart beating with love, found no response ! My 
daughter finished her song, and her eyes filled with 
tears. I read her thoughts for they were of me. 
" Mother ! Mother ! " she was saying, and I responded. 
It was the call I had heard beyond the bars of heaven I 



BACK TO EARTH AGAIN. 233 

I could not bear it, and my companion said as she 
again placed her arm around me : 

"Come, my sister, you can do no good here. There 
is your child sleeping in its crib. It is cared for as 
by yourself. Kiss it, and we will go. Be assured 
whenever you are wanted here you will feel the 
desire." 

I kissed my child. "Let me stay," I pleaded; "I 
want to sit in my old place, in that vacant chair. 
Then I will go." 

" As you will; and I will endeavor to impress your 
daughter with some ray of sunshine. " 

She bent over my daughter, and by means I did 
not understand, her mind responded to the spirit's 
thoughts: "Your mother is with you, and retains 
the same affection for you she had in earth-life." 
With the influx of that thought a smile lit up her 
face, and turning to the organ, she sang, "Annie 
Laurie," a song we had often sung together. How 
thankful I was that one ray of sunlight gladdened 
her heart, and the memory of me was yet dear. I 
was grateful to the kind spirit who had assisted me, 
and then she said we must go, for the trial was too 
great for my strength. 

"You must calm yourself," said my companion, 
"for this sorrow is without the least benefit. Be- 
lieve it is for the best, and though the hour is dark, 
it will bring a perfect day." 

"I can not prevent myself thinking of my chil- 
dren and my husband. My love for them is stronger 
than ever, and I could not have been persuaded to 
have left them for a day. Can I not, oh, good angel, 
remain with them ? * The fairest scene of your home 
is desolate compared to the earth ! " 

With tenderest compassion she said: "You are 
now in the earth-sphere and take on its conditions. 



234 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

You are seeing through earthly eyes, and affected 
by earthly ways. When we once leave this scene 
you will be no longer distressed. Willingly would I 
leave you. I have no right to force you away. I 
influence you as I think for your highest good. 
Here you are unrecognized, and are constantly 
troubled because you can not make yourself known, 
and by a reflection of the sorrow of your family. 
Whenever you can be of use to them you will re- 
ceive the knowledge and can return. Now we had 
better go." 

She placed her arm around me, and whether the 
earth sank away from us, or we flew from the earth, 
I was unable to tell. I have since learned how to 
traverse space by the force of will; but then I was 
ignorant of the method, and dependent on others. 
Now, when I desire to visit a place, or be with cer- 
tain friends, the desire creates an attraction, which 
in spirit is the equivalent of magnetic attraction in 
the physical world. 

When we again reached our spirit home our com- 
panions gathered around us, and I was soothed by 
the kind words of my mother. I felt condemned for 
my loss of interest in the earth-life which had so 
recently absorbed my mind, but it became like a 
dim dream, and ceased to trouble me. What if I 
should forget it entirely ? I was appalled at the 
idea, and cried at the pang it gave. 

" Do not fear, you will not forget, but after a time 
your affections will strengthen. Our sister has much 
to learn, and needlessly distresses herself." 

The years passed, and I became accustomed to my 
new life, when a message came for me. The palpi- 
tating waves repeated, "Mother! mother! mother!" 
It was my youngest daughter, who had grown al- 
most to womanhood. I knew by her cry that she 



A SPIRIT LEAVING THE BODY. 235 

was in mortal pain, and yielding to the attractions 
I was soon with her. She was motionless on a 
couch, surrounded by her relatives, and her cousin 
held her cold hand. " It is all over," they said, in tears. 

"Can it be?" I eagerly asked. "Oh! can it be 
that the time has already come when I am to have 
one of my children with me ? To have one of them who 
will know me, and converse with me ? Oh ! heaven- 
ly Father, I thank thee for this answer to my in- 
cessant prayer. " 

Then I looked closely and saw the great transi- 
tion was approaching. I could not assist ; I could 
only stand by her side and receive her. She seemed 
asleep, which I fully understood from my own ex- 
perience. Slowly the spirit left the insensible body, 
and as I saw my spirit-daughter recovering her 
senses, I drew near and whispered, " Claribel." She 
opened wide her blue eyes, and I knew she saw me. 
I threw my arms around her, and wept for glad- 
ness. " Darling Claribel, do you not know me, your 
mother ? " 

"Dearest mama," she said with her old smile, 
"know you ? Why, you are younger, but the same. 
Where have you been so long ? We thought you 
dead?" 

" Do you not know ?" I asked, apprehensively. 

" Know ? What mean you ? " 

"Yes, I am what they call dead; and were you 
not likewise, you could not see me !" 

"I dead?" she replied, with a laugh which re- 
called her childhood, throwing her arms gracefully 
over her head. "Look you, mama, how far from it 
I am. I have been wretchedly sick, and in such 
fiery pain ; but it is over, and I am perfectly well." 

We drew to one side, and she then turning, saw 
the friends, weeping, and her body on the couch. 



236 ' PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

"Why do they weep?" she asked, "and who is 
that on the couch ? I am confused, for it is like 
another self." 

"They are weeping for your loss, and that form 
on the couch is yours." 

"Am I to return to it ? What am I to do, dear 
mother ? " 

" No, you will need it no more. Your life is here- 
after with me and the angels." 

" What mean you, mother, by saying you and I 
are dead ? " 

"That we are, my child. That is what people 
call dead." 

" I do not understand," she replied musingly. Then 
going to her cousin's side, who was still holding her 
physical hand, she said, "Cousin Frank, what are 
you weeping for ? Do you not see how well I am ?" 

He did not hear her words, and she spoke again, 
playfully patting his face. Then she saw that she 
was no longer able to be heard or felt, and threw 
herself into my arms, weeping violently. I soothed 
her as best I could, upbraiding myself with foolishly 
teaching her the ways of our life before she was 
able to receive. " My child," I said, "how glad I am 
to have you again with me. They will all come to 
us sooner or later. Now we will go to my home, for 
it is not well for you to remain. After a time you 
will be instructed in these mysteries." 

I attempted to go, but found that although I could 
depart alone, I could not bear Claribel with me. I 
had not perfected myself sufficiently in the method, 
and her attraction was toward that spot alone. I 
prayed for the coming of a companion, and soon 
there came one to my aid. On either side we threw 
our arms around her, and then our wills bore her 

nward with us. 



A BIT OF JEALOUSY. 237 

When we reached our home, and the loving com- 
panions came with welcome to Claribel, and she saw 
beauty and perfection everywhere, and felt how 
happy her coming had made me, tears trembled in 
her eyes as she said : " It is wonderful, mother, and 
I ought not to regret, but you know earth-life was 
sweet to me, and I had plans for the future." 

"Yes, my child," I replied, "the days were too 
short, and your friends were devoted, but your plans 
are thwarted, yet you must know that all is well. *' 
Her towering air-castles had vanished ; but soon she 
had far greater sources of happiness in the group 
of beautiful children she instructed. 



I said I would not visit earth unless called, for the 
pain was greater than the pleasure. Even when called 
I refused. "My husband," they said, "was about to 
wed again." 

"It is well," I replied ; "his is the rough, earth-life, 
hard to walk alone. If he so desires, I ought to be 
willing." 

Yet I was not willing or I should have gone It 
would have seemed strange, indeed, to have visited 
my old home, and found another in my place. It 
would have emphasized my death to me. Thinking 
the matter over, I said: 

" No ! I will not go. Let them be happy. I will not 
enter their sphere. ' 

When, years after, the message came that he was 
soon to join me, I hastened to his side. When I 
reached him he had already nearly passed through the 
transition, and had regained his spiritual perceptions. 
As "1 came to him he at once knew me, and opened 
wide his arms to receive me. The years were blotted 
out. We were again to each other all that we had ever 



238 PERGONAL EXPERIENCE. 

been. By intuition he knew that he had met the 
change, and the first words he said to me were : 

" I am so glad the weary watch is over. I knew 
heaven was not so large I could not find you,but I did 
not expect so soon to meet you. It was like you to 
come, and I ought to have expected it.'' 

" I heard your call," I replied, " and heaven is not 
so wide that I could not come. . Now we must go, 
and I will take you to the most beautiful place you 
ever saw in dreams. You must not remain to wit- 
ness the proceedings further." 

He smiled at my words: "Why, you talk as if 
there was something terrible about death. It has 
been the most pleasant passage in my life. I have 
suffered a great deal in its approach, but when it 
came it brought only joy. When I saw you, I was 
so pleased, my clay -lips uttered my thoughts, the last 
words they ever gave. Now it is done, I must stay 
till it is over. I want to see how the relatives and 
friends act, and hear what they say. You know it 
will be strange to hear one's own funeral sermon." 

As he would not go, I remained with him, and 
entering again into the earth-sphere, suffered from 
the contact. My husband was greatly interested in 
the ceremonies, and when they were over, he said:- 

* ' I am glad the old aching body has at last gone to 
its final rest. The children were grieved, and ought 
to know how they misunderstand. Perhaps I can tell 
them some time. Hearts do not break with grief, 
else mine would have broken. Come, now, my new- 
found wife, I will go where you wish." 

I need not repeat the story of the journey or de- 
scribe the meeting with our Claribel. Her father 
was of so happy a disposition, that he at once assimi- 
lated his surroundings, and became one with his 
companions. 



THE POET'S STORY. &39 

" I have worked and struggled along," he said, 
" having little time to think, and I am as ignorant as 
a savage. I desire at once to commence gaining 
knowledge. How am I to proceed ?" 

We all laughed at his eagerness, and one said • 

" There is time enough ; you must first rest and 
recover strength. " 

"Rest! I was never stronger, and I am anxious 
for exertion. I feel mentally starved and crave 
thought food." 

"You will find no difficult task. To desire is to 
have, and you will soon become in sympathy with 
the thought-atmosphere of our home." 

Then one of our number, who was a poet, super- 
ior to us all, said he had had a singular and painful 
experience, and we demanded to hear it. 

The Poet's Story. — I had been enthroned, and as 
I came up the pathway leading to this eminence, I 
met a boisterous throng of people. Strange faces 
they had, and yet they were familiar. I looked 
closely, and imagine my surprise when I found they 
belonged to me. They were the thoughts I had ex- 
pressed in my earth-life. Some were dark, repulsive 
and inexpressibly ugly, while others were exquisitely 
beautiful. What a horde they were, and though 
some were pleasing, the greater proportion caused 
my cheeks to blush with shame. 

"Father! father!" they called, rushing toward 
me. 

"Away!" I cried. "J know you not!" 

"Then we will follow you. We belong to you, 
and wherever you go we will go. We will not 
desert you." 

"If this be so," I cried in despair, '-'then I am 
burdened beyond endurance, and immortality be- 



240 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

comes a curse. If I must remain with this throng of 
tormentors, reminding me continually of early fol- 
lies, then extinction is preferable." 

What shall I do with this miscreant crowd, de- 
formed and rude ? I can not take them home to my 
companions. If these are embodiments of my earthly 
thoughts, how they would scorn me. If this is to be 
my retinue, then I must seek a new home where I 
am unknown. I must cast aside the companionship 
of this company. My punishment is terrible. I 
threw myself down in a paroxysm or grief and re- 
morse. An angel came by, and pausing said : 

" Would you escape from your thraldom ? " 

" Escape !" I cried. ■■ Can I escape ?" 

'•Do you not see that the most repulsive of these 
spectres are fashioned of the thoughts which are of 
yourself, recording your former vanity, pride, un- 
charity, selfishness and forgetfulness of others ? See 
you that lovely being representing a deed of self- 
sacrifice ? " 

"Oh ! that they were all like her ! " I cried. 

" Then listen. You must act in such a manner 
that the good will eclipse these shadows, when they 
will disappear." 

Saying this he vanished, and I, reflecting, said 
that I would a 4 once free myself from the dreadful 
following. Opportunely there came a spirit moaning 
past me. Her brother on earth was contemplating a 
horrible crime. He had determined to take the life 
of his mother in order to become possessed of her 
estate. The sister had vainly attempted to give 
a warning or to influence him, and in despair at her 
failure she had left them to their fate. I said to her: 

" Come. I will go with you, and perhaps together 
we can prevent this crime." 

She fervently expressed her gratitude as she con- 



SPIRITS PREVENT A CRIME. 241 

ducted me to her mother's house. It was midnight 
when we arrived, as I saw in the dim lamplight by 
the tall clock, and the mother was sleeping. 

"We can only watch," said my companion, "and 
if he should come, we can do nothing to save her." 

"Do you not know that sometimes sleep unlocks 
the avenues of the spirit, and we can approach 
much nearer than in waking hours ? When we thus 
come, people say they have dreamed." 

I bent over the mother, her white locks fell from 
beneath her cap over the pillow, and there was 
something in the expression of her lips and cheeks 
reminding me of my own. I tested her sensitive- 
ness and found that her mind responded. Then I 
willed these words : 

"Edward intends to kill you with a knife. He 
will come into your room, and you must awake and 
charge him with the crime, and say to him that his 
sister came from heaven to tell you ! " 

She started as if by a blow, and with a horrified 
expression, she sprang upright. 

" Who is here ?" she cried. " Who spoke to me ? 
I have had a fearful dream, so vivid that I thought it 
reality." 

She sank again on the pillow, and there were light 
footsteps at the door, which slowly swung open, and 
the brother entered. The mother waited only a mo- 
ment when she arose and addressed him in the words 
of her dream. It came so suddenly that he ad- 
mitted his intentions, and pleaded for forgiveness. 
He had been made the victim of bad men, and if he 
could escape from them he might be saved. By 
nature he was not so bad, but he was weak. 

Leaving them to each other, I started again for 
our home, my heart full of gladness, for I had fol- 
lowed the advice of the angel, and expected to there- 



242 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

by escape my companions. Judge of my surprise 
when on looking back, I saw a new form, more ugly 
than any of the others, the result of this act from 
whichl had expected so much. As I gazed in despair, 
the angel came again, and with a smile said to me. 

" It was a selfish act !" 

"Selfish?" I asked. 

" Aye ; you had not the good of the woman or the 
salvation of the son or the happiness of the daughter 
at heart. You had only your own pleasure and gain. 
You would thereby relieve yourself of a burden. 
The world is ruined by such benevolence. You will 
have a long aud weary road if you travel in that 
direction." 

" I am a fool," I said, overwhelmed by my imbecil- 
ity and want of spiritual understanding. " What can 
I do ?" I implored. 

" If I direct you, there will be no merit. You must 
determine for yourself." 

As he spoke he vanished, and I sat down, resting 
like a weary pilgrim, overburdened. Then I saw a 
spirit coming rapidly toward me, and on approach- 
ing she hurriedly said : 

' ' I am told you c n influence mortals. My son is 
captain of a steamer, and having lost his course, is 
sailing directly on a rocky coast. Come and save 
not only him, but the hundreds of his slumbering 
passengers." 

Without a moment's delay, I followed her, and 
came to the steamer. The gray of morning was 
flushing the sky, and the crests of heavily rolling 
seas gleamed in the cold light. Everything was 
quiet on deck, for the passengers were asleep, and 
nothing was heard but the steady pulsations of the 
engine I looked beyond the bow, and saw the shore 
some distance away. It was a high promontory of 



SPIRITS INFLUENCING MORTALS. 243 

black rocks, against which the surf was violently 
beating, and the ship was headed directly on the point 
where it was most violent. Whatever was to be done, 
must be done quickly. We went into the cabin where 
the captain sat with his head resting on his hands, be - 
tween sleeping and waking. Could I impress him 
with his danger ? I made the attempt and failed. I 
repeated several times with no better success. I be- 
came anxious, as the danger increased, for every pul- 
sation of the engine brought the ship nearer to the 
rocks. The sleeping passengers, strong men, help- 
less women and children, how soon they would be 
called to face certain destruction. What agony the 
now quiet decks would witness ! What waiting and 
hoping against hope there would be in hundreds of 
desolate homes ! The contemplation unnerved me, 
and I was unfitted to exercise my skill in impressing 
thoughts on mortal brain. I was recalled by the 
voice of the mother : 

" Can you not save my son ? " 

I confess that when the picture of agony I have 
sketched came to my mind, in my wish to prevent 
the catastrophe, all selfish considerations were for- 
gotten, and I would unhesitatingly have given my 
existence for the safety of the ship, were it possible 
to have done so. 

"I can do nothing unless I have aid," I replied, 
and with my whole strength I invoked our elder 
brother. Instantly he came. He understands the 
methods of impressing thought so perfectly that, as 
you know, he rarely fails. He placed his hand on 
the captain's head, and the thought he gave was : 

' - Ship ahoy, breakers ahead ! " 

The captain sprang to his feet, and rubbing his 
eyes in a bewildered manner, rushed on deck. 



244 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 

"Who hailed us ?" he demanded of the drowsy 
watch. 

"No one, sir; all is quiet." 

"We were hailed," he said firmly, and gaining the 
bridge he sought to penetrate the darkness. He lis- 
tened, and his face paled, for distinctly came the 
boom of the surf. 

Swift were the commands, and the ship by a sharp 
curve doubled on her course, the rocky ledge being so 
near that a few revolutions more and there would 
have been no escape. 

A great many of the passengers came up on deck, 
aroused by the unusual motion of the ship and the 
shouting of orders, and when they understood the 
peril they had so narrowly escaped, they embraced 
each other and cried for joy. 

As I again sought our home, forgetful of every- 
thing but the benefit I had conferred by my journey, 
I glanced behind me, and saw a shining light, and 
afar off, in dim outline, the group of beings I so 
strongly desired to escape. Unconsciously 1 had 
performed an act that had placed a light between 
me and them. Rejoice with me, dear friends, I am 
enabled to be unselfish. 

Then the elder said : " Our brother adds to his other 
good qualities, that of humility." 



"The angel-life became more complete and perfect 
as year by year the loved ones came up from the 
shadows of earth, until our family circle was almost 
restored. After a time its old members will take 
their new places, and when my earth-friends are 
all here, there will be little attraction for me in the 
old life. 

"It is yet new and strange, and cannot be described 



FROM EARTH TO THE INFINITE 245 

to mortal comprehension. Language itself must be 
spiritualized, and words given a new meaning. 

"I have mingled tears of pity with those who have 
been bereft, at the same time knowing that their 
loss was gain to the departed ones. 

"Activity is our happiness, and thinking right and 
doing our very best are the gateways to heaven. 
Earth-life is a joy only when the end is known. Here 
its infinite possibilities are realized. Not in a year or a 
century, but in the fullness of time can all this come. 
Weep, for it is human, when your loved ones pass the 
shadowy portals, remembering, however, that the 
spiritual sun on the other side will, by comparison, 
make your brightest day on earth a rayless night." 



FROM EARTH TO THE INFINITE, 



The mists are falling on the purple sea, 
The sun is sinking in the clouds aflame ; 

For many a day the far receding sea 
And melting sky have seemed almost the same. 

At first we met the bitter storm and cloud, 
With little sunshine on the darkling mere, 

The waves were high, the icy winds were loud ; 
The days were dark, the nights were full of fear. 

By every trial having gathered strength, 
And hopeful conquered every adverse gale, 

We now have reached a calmer sea at length, 
And with full hearts unbend the flowing sail. 

Behind, the sinking sun reveals no shore 
Illumed with glory of his purple light; 

The land we left has passed forever more 
Beyond the reach of longing mortal sight. 



\ A ? 



246 FROM EARTH TO THE INFINITE, 

A boundless sea on every side expands; 

We're drifting slowly toward the glowing east; 
In faith expecting yet more welcome lands, 

When toiling care, and mortal life have ceased. 

Behold, it comes in robes of azure light ! 

As sinks the sun behind the sullen waves, 
And on the pearly shore, enchanting sight, 

Are all the friends we thought within the grave. 

And now, oh ship, your weary pinions fold, 
And rock to sleep upon the harbor's breast ; 

This is the home, by faith our hearts foretold, 
Where we shall find activity and rest. 



INDEX. 



I After death 215 

Angel life becoming perfect 244 

Angels, guardian 117 

Anger affecting the secretions — 185 

Animals have no souls 205 

Aspirations for a future life 221 

A spirit prevents a disaster 243 

A sullen spirit 229 

Atom, the 11 

Atomic theory 12 

Beauty of the spirit 224 

Beecher, H, W 158 

Better Methods 194 

Blind Tom 157 

Brain and Nerves 197 

Buchannan, Dr 65 

Bnnyan 160 

Charlatanism and mesmerism 178 

Christian science 189 

Clairvoyance 53 

artificial and normal 57 

from dreams 57 

examples of 60 

11 Mollie Fancher 57 

Eliza Hamilton 60 

'• Laura Bridgm an 62 

" favored by disease 56 

independent of the senses 55 

Concentration . , 162 

Continuous earth-life 210 

Cultivation of sensitiveness 220 

Curse of false belief 189 

Death 215 

" appearance after - 142 

*' warnings of 128 

" Garfield's 13l 

Degradation of prayer 167 

Denton, Prof 67 

Dissolution of a spirit 2C8 

Divine motherhood 186 

Doing for others 227 

Double presence 100 

Dreams 86 

predict death 139 

" Prince Leopold s — 140 

" Lincoln's 138 



248 INDEX. 



Dreams life saved by 79-126-128 

correct errors 127 

44 Stanley on 89 

of Dr. Holbrook 90 

" clairvoyant 83 

" shipwreck prevented by 78 

" sensitive 80 

prophetic ,. 88 

of Mary Hudlett 80 

" of Stanton Moses '. 8i 

Earth-life enough here 217 

Ether, physic , « 114 

illustrations of , . . , 116 

Evolution 27-31 

Faith cure 180 

Finney, Pres. prayer for rain 167 

First day in spirit li f e 2?5 

Force, theory of t . 23 

Forewarnings 173 

Gulf between matter and spirit 211 

Hallucinations 70 

Happy and perfect lives 191 

Hypnotism 50 

Ideas not words transmitted 65 

Idiots and immortality. 208 

Illness of mind 185 

Illusions - 68 

" subjective 68 

11 suggestive , 69 

of Prof . Hitchcock 70 

Immortality, want of evidence to prove 10 

Impressions 77 

Increase of skepticism 10 

Individualization of force 213 

Influence, law of 116 

Influence of mind over secretions , 182 

Influencing mortals 232 

Inspiration 156 

Inspiration at its height 219 

Is mental cure a sham . . 183 

Leaving the aching body 238 

Life 15 

*• moner theory of 16 

" and mind , 17 

" the future , 36 

" without immortality a sham 200 

Light in the heart 218 

" waves of 21 

Limits of power of mind over body , 186 

Limitation of languages 216 

Limitation of the power 168 

Man a dual being #)1 



INDEX. 249 



Man alone immortal 206 

Material science— views of nature , 14 

Matter 13 

" is there more than one kind of? 12 

Medical student's prayer 170 

Mental cure 180 

Mesmeric state 47 

Mesmerism, moral effects of 52 

Mind and life , 17 

" independent 116 

Mothers' influence over unborn child 186 

Murder prevented by a spirit 241 

Napoleon 163 

Narrative by a spirit 222 

Nature 14 

" and the supernatural . 171 

Necessity o.f knowledge 9 

Nervous systems 198 

OleBuil 156 

Omens explained 131 

Origin of spirit 2G4 

Our sins follow us 240 

Paganini , 156 

Pains of spirits in earth sphere 233 

Persecution , 193 

Physical senses , 55 

Physical theories fail to solve the problem of life , 8 

Prayer, who answers it? 169 

Predictions 130 

Premonitions 3, 79, 122 

kt why not received by all 136 

Power of mind over body 181 

Presentiments 79 

Pre-existence 209 

Priests and jugglers 166 

Promethean curse 190 

Properties of matter 13 

Prophecy by dreams 81, 8 

Protoplasm 30, 199 

Psychic growth. 207 

Psychometry 67 

Regeneration of a spirit 230 

Reincarnation 203 

Returning to earth 231 

Sacred shrines and holy places 74 

Saving souls 192 

Scientific method of studv 31 

Sense— the sixth 44 

Senses, limitation of 21, 2 

Sensitiveness 37, 40-1-2, 104, 162 

" what it is 37 

" relation to culture 43 



250 INDEX. 

Sensitiveness during sleep 76 

" unconscious 156 

of spiritual beings 43, 164 

Sickness a mark of ignorance 187 

Sight, a race without 38 

Skepticism, increase of 10 

Sleep 46 

Society of Psychical Research 99 

Somnambulism 50 

Sound waves 20 

Spirit regretting her death 337 

Spirit watching his funeral obsequies 237 

Spirits confusion after death 236 

Spirits in despair 239 

Spirits know not age 229 

Spirits meeting mortal at death 235 

Spirits traveling by will power <■- 234 

Spiritual ether 19 

" existence 217 

" understanding 242 

Spotless lives — , 191 

Strength in weakness 228 

Struggle for existence 28 

Superior intelligences, interference of 79 

Survival of the fittest . . 29 

The animal in man 195 

The arch complete 205 

The body a staging 205 

The celestial body .". 202 

The immortal state 188 

The sensitive's sufferings 218 

The terrestrial body 202 

Thought atmosphere 113 

transference 77,80,99,102 

Trance 53 

" conditions of 53 

Untutored minds 195 

Warning voice 135 

Weakness of new born spirits 226 

What i s back of force ? 212 

Worlds, dead 22 

" end of 23 



IN PREPARATION. 



CAREER OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND 
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Founded on Evolution and the Continuity of 
Man's Existence Beyond the Grave. 



Part I. — Trie Career of Religious Ideas. 
Part II.— Ethics of Science. 



This volume unfolds the Progress of Religious Ideas 
through Fetishism, Phallic Worship, Polytheism and Mono- 
theism to their emergence into the light of science, divested 
of superstition, and elaborates the natural system of ethics 
founded on knowledge of the physical and spiritual world. 

By HUDSON TUTTLE. 

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